Banning books goes against the point of libraries

How do you begin to write about the most special place in the world? For me, this place is the Royal Oak Public Library, a single story building in the heart of downtown Royal Oak, Michigan. Just as much as I was raised in an orange brick house half a mile north, I also feel like I grew up in the library. My family often walked there on Saturday mornings — three kids and a red plastic wagon in tow. Each of us filled our arms with a towering stack of books that we checked out with our very own library cards. The children’s section in the basement remained my favorite, even after I graduated to the YA section upstairs. I liked to trace my hands along the staircase’s mural, a sprawling assemblage of books and their endless possibilities spilling out — ballet dancers, horseback riders and hot air balloons amongst others. I was always giddy with anticipation, eager to carefully scan rows and rows of shelves and find a niche history book about the Titanic or a holographic-covered series about a child hypnotist.

My library card is almost 15 years old at this point, with a light blue butterfly on the front and the faded signature of a 5 year old on the back. The library is still my dreamland even though we’ve long been well acquainted. I think that even as a kindergartener, I had a small twinge of understanding that no matter how many hours I spent poring over the books on these shelves, there would always be more to experience and learn. The infinite potential for knowledge housed within a single building only a short walk away from my home made this library the most special place in the world to me.

In Royal Oak, just as in Ann Arbor, the passing decades have changed the city’s landscape. In my own years living there, I saw a parking structure that overlooks downtown replace the flat library parking lot once adorned with coin meters. Buildings grew taller and infrastructure was modernized, but amidst all of the change, the library has remained a constant presence. I have been a voracious reader since my childhood, due in large part to the access I had to such a well-funded and supportive library. The ROPL has always given me reason to believe in books which feel almost magical in their ability to facilitate and sustain community.

In the children’s section, there was a small wooden puppet theater through which my siblings and I unlocked our best and brightest characters. Jutting off to the side was a room where summer programming was held — book clubs and reading to dogs were my favorite activities. There was a used book sale with a permanent space that my dad adored, and across the way was a theater (outside of which I vividly remember getting separated from my mom after an exciting magic show). The library was a key destination all throughout my adolescence. I stopped by with friends for air conditioned respite in the hot summer months, watched my younger cousin Luke experience the thrill of finding books for the first time and relished in the peaceful delight of sitting in a chair while quietly reading amongst other book lovers, strangers in most ways but deeply familiar in others. The heart of the ROPL is the way it fosters a sense of belonging within patrons of all ages.

Much goes on behind the scenes of my local library to build the strong sense of community that I experienced growing up. Public and school libraries are more than a safehouse for books — they encompass a wide variety of resources and support systems that are available to the public for free. 

Libraries are increasingly called upon to fill gaps within communities. According to ROPL Library Director Sandy Irwin, The ROPL has a “library of things” where patrons can check out items that range from bike locks to board games to gardening tools. Especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, shared library couches exist as much-needed third places, offering people opportunities to socialize and recharge outside of work and home. Yet while libraries seem to be providing greater resources for communities, they continue to face budget cuts and public scrutiny. 

In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Kathy Lester, former librarian and current Wayne State University adjunct faculty, shared that libraries often lack important resources.

“Michigan is 46th in the nation in supporting staffing our school libraries,” Lester said. “There are so many schools in our state that don’t even have a school library, let alone access to a school librarian. I feel like it’s really doing a disservice to our students. Our literacy scores have remained low and there is a correlation.” 

The lack of school library support in Michigan is not the only reason for concern; rather, it demonstrates a broader trend in which libraries across the state and country are not appropriately prioritized or valued. All libraries, which I once understood to be places of undisputed imaginative freedom, have recently become political battlegrounds.

In 2023, the American Library Association documented 4,240 individual book titles that faced serious threats of censorship — the highest number recorded in 20 years of tracking such data. Approximately 47% of books named represent LGBTQ+ and/or Black, Indigenous, and people of Color experiences. Texas, Florida and Tennessee were among the states with the most book challenges, but censorship efforts were recorded in 49 states in 2023, excluding only Vermont. In some circumstances, where decisions about library funding are outsourced to local governments, a library’s refusal to remove books from their collection can put their funding in jeopardy.

When asked about this phenomenon, Irwin said, “If you look at the Patmos Library on the other side of the state, that was a big thing where they refuse to remove LGBTQIA+ books — specifically ‘Gender Queer.’ And the residents there voted not to fund their library, and so they lost their funding.”

I also spoke to Angie Oehrli, children’s literature librarian at the University of Michigan Library. We talked about how frustrating it is to witness an individual parent or group push political ideologies and censorship in libraries, and how these decisions affect the entire community.

“If a book is not there, that’s removing that choice for all children,” Oehrli said. “I don’t want to dismiss the parent’s role with a child. That’s a valid thing and nobody’s saying (otherwise). But a parent doesn’t have a role for the next person’s child.”

When I was in elementary school, the library was one of the few public spaces where I could move around completely on my own. From the moment I walked through the sliding glass door with my parents, I took off in pursuit of whatever books I wanted to read, without adults looking over my shoulder to evaluate everything I chose off the shelves. Of course, I was bound to age-appropriate sections, but there was still so much variety within these different reading levels that I didn’t even care. The freedom to choose, especially at an age when so much in my life was dictated by my parents and teachers, was empowering.

In an interview with The Daily, Debbie Mikula, Executive Director of the Michigan Library Association, told me about MI Right to Read, an initiative of the MLA that advocates for intellectual freedom and aids Michigan Libraries targeted for censorship. Their mission statement speaks to the unprecedented nature of modern book bans and the coalition’s approach to censorship efforts. It reads, “No one individual or group should make sweeping decisions that take that process of careful consideration away from the experts and that choice away from readers.”

Part of MI Right to Read’s work involves conducting and documenting research. “We wanted to know the opinions of the voting citizenship of Michigan about how they felt about book banning and censorship issues,” Mikula said. The poll found that a majority of the Michigan public supported MI Right to Read and the MLA’s position: 83% of respondents said they would support state legislation that protected against book banning.

Hearing these numbers made me question how the opposing population — which represents a clear minority — has been able to achieve such success. In my discussions with Lester, I came to understand that the groups that support book banning have gained such unprecedented traction because of their ability to weaponize fear. In using aggressive language that calls librarians pedophiles and groomers, they evoke parental concern. Censorship proponents also took advantage of the uncertainty of the pandemic to promote political agendas.

Lester and Mikula both spoke about this issue, considering how sentiments of distrust toward educational institutions and government exacerbated by the pandemic have given way to increased censorship efforts in libraries.

“I think they’re turning political disagreements into this culture war,” Mikula said. “And libraries are kind of low-hanging fruit.”

***

In three out of the five interviews I conducted for this piece, a quote from Rudine Sims Bishop, professor emerita of education at Ohio State University, was referenced. In one of her famous essays, “Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors,” Dr. Bishop talks about books as tools for readers to witness their own experiences and to consider the perspectives of others. 

“Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of a larger human experience,” Bishop writes.

Book bans have always been a topic of infuriating interest to me. I wrote about them in my high school’s magazine, and subsequently returned to the topic for a series of three papers in my first year writing class. I have been keeping tabs on circulating lists of controversial reads for years and have never been able to understand why anyone would want to remove literature that reflects the vast diversity of humanity.

The kind of community and autonomy I experienced in the ROPL as a child is now being shattered in libraries across Michigan and the rest of the country. Libraries can’t serve a community if they are defunded (like in the case of the Patmos Library). Defunding libraries leads to the removal of texts that reflect the lived experiences of marginalized communities and limits access to the educational, social, financial, technological and supportive resources that these institutions provide.

The benefits to ensuring access to diverse materials within libraries are extensive, and include the formation of community. 

“(School libraries) provide resources that support the curriculum, but (they) also try to provide resources for personal learning for students, as well as just reading enjoyment — finding things that students love to read to keep them interested in reading,” Lester said. “That sense of community is really important.” 

I agreed. The community within a library is typically based on a common interest in reading, but this is fractured when book bans attempt to dictate that not all individual interests and experiences are valid. My understanding of community within the ROPL was based on the knowledge that each person was free to pursue their own curiosities in books, but the threat of books being pulled from shelves in other libraries across the country doesn’t make this a universal reality.

Even in the face of unwavering opposition, public and school libraries alike remain committed to maintaining a diverse collection of materials. In September 2023, the University Library distributed almost 2,000 free copies of books that had recently been banned or challenged. Oehrli, who was involved in the process of choosing these titles, also shared that the library has put together a book-banning archive. This digital archive has resources about the book-challenging movement and relevant legislation.

The Friends of the Royal Oak Public Library, a local volunteer group that works closely with the library to fundraise and helps organize donated materials, has been selling t-shirts to raise awareness of growing attempts across the country to ban books. The shirts read “I’m with the banned” on the front, and the back lists 100 of the most challenged books from 2010 to 2019. All proceeds from the sale are used by the group to help support library programs.

Larry Baker, treasurer for the Friends of the ROPL, told me that the intention was always for the Royal Oak community to come together in recognition of the challenges libraries across the country are facing.

Inevitably, concerns over certain library books will continue to arise, but the hope is that initial frustrations will translate into engaging, informed and respectful conversations that involve both the library and the external community.

“Every school district should have a board approved policy over collection development and reconsideration,” Lester said, with the “gold standard” being reflected in policies that encourage challengers to read the books in question and participate in civil discussions.

Irwin emphasized the importance of recognizing individual beliefs, but not allowing them to dictate the library materials for an entire community.

“You should be able to walk into the public library and find what you want, and know that if you’re finding what you want, somebody else should be able to find what they want,” Irwin said. “People should just be able to see themselves reflected in a book and be able to see their own lives on the pages. And that hadn’t happened for so long.”

At the end of the day, the book-banning discussion comes down to people’s ability to choose what they’d like to read and to not infringe upon another person’s access to this same right. For children especially, libraries reflect a unique opportunity for autonomy where one can, and should, be able to make their own decisions, unbridled by what’s on the shelves, what’s taught in schools or what’s shown on the news.

*** 

Returning to the Royal Oak Public Library to write this piece, I was struck by the way the smell of books and freshly vacuumed carpet washed over me with a gentle breeze of air conditioning. It was the same sensation of returning home after being gone for a long time. When I am greeted by this familiar scent, my mind feels at peace knowing that coming back to the library always means something exciting, something new, awaits me.

I was irrevocably shaped by the libraries I frequented as a child, and to this day, I carry their influence with me wherever I go. Intellectual freedom is a right deserved by all, and it’s up to local communities to do all they can to protect the libraries that operate under this assumption. Banning books is a usurpation of each individual’s capacity for knowledge and self-realization which otherwise remains unbounded. To homogenize and restrict how we can learn and foster community is to destroy the very essence of what libraries everywhere have spent centuries building.

Statement Columnist Katie Lynch can be reached at katiely@umich.edu.

The post Banning books goes against the point of libraries appeared first on The Michigan Daily.