In 2023, the American Library Association reported 1,247 attempts to censor or ban books nationwide. In a similar study that tracked between the years of 2018 and 2022, 66 books were found to be challenged in the state of Idaho alone. This is a sizable number, and considering most of these books are from queer authors and authors of color, the censorship of these stories is erasing important diverse perspectives.
Banning books has recently become the hot new trend of state legislation, especially in Idaho. Earlier this year, House Bill 710 was passed by Governor Little, which forces libraries to relocate books that are deemed “harmful” to the youth. What is deemed as “harmful” is completely up to the patron who reports the book—typically, this includes stories that feature LGBTQ+ characters or nudity of any kind.
Public libraries are unable to attempt to contest these reports: once a book is reported, they are forced to relocate it to the “adult” section of the library.
While some people may think that “unconventional” lifestyles are dangerous, it’s not fair for others to choose what is and is not okay for kids to read. Librarians must earn a degree to become a librarian—they are justly educated and understand best how to best provide kids and adults alike with the stories that will speak best to patrons.
Thankfully, there are people who are taking charge against this wave of book banning, including Moscow’s own local bookstore, BookPeople. Last month, the store began hosting monthly Banned Book Club meetings, where locals can sign up to read and discuss designated books that have been banned or challenged in years past.
Co-owner of BookPeople Bre Pickens created the Banned Book Club along with co-creator Ali Sumner. During an interview, the two brought a lot of insight into how banning books affects our local bookstores as well as the state as a whole. The first meeting of Banned Book Club was on Oct. 28, where attendees discussed Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian novel that describes a fictional future of firefighters, or “Book People,” burning books.
Pickens went on to speak about how the store was named after the “Book People” in Fahrenheit 451.
While talking to both Pickens and Sumner, they brought up concerns about book banning. Pickens spoke passionately about why they believe some books are getting banned. “A lot of the censorship is from people who just don’t want their children reading anything outside their value system, which in my mind if you as a parent are making that decision, that’s fine. It’s when you start making decisions for other children that I am not comfortable with.”
Sumners also has strong opinions about book bans, saying, “It is just a way to control what people read. I think reading is an individualistic experience—we all have personal taste and things we enjoy reading.”
Many people believe that the books being banned have objectively inappropriate content such as pornography. However, when asked this question, Pickens slammed that idea as myth, saying, “A lot of the books being banned are being so because of queer representation, not because of pornographic material. All of these kids’ books have been classed in specific age ranges well before they even come into the librarian’s hands.”
From both the experiences of Sumner and Pickens, we can tell that people are falsely led to believe the books being banned are ones that are showing children adult content. In reality, this is almost never the case.
If you want to join the Banned Book Club, their next meeting will be on Nov. 25 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at BookPeople. They will be reading “Last Night at the Telegraph Club,” a young adult historical fiction story set in the 1950s.
Gen Z Reader
Book banning is a terrible phenomenon, but until students and activists on the left begin standing up against technological censorship-by-proxy such as what got uncovered in the Twitter Files, it will continue to ring hollow. As it turns out, it was a project of the DC political left allied with the Intelligence Community and Federal law enforcement that built an increasingly organized system of government involvement in online content moderation. Bolstered by a massive amount of federal and private investment in "disinformation research and policing" NGO's that began after 2016, a cottage industry of nonprofit orgs has developed to try to police narratives online. Multiple congressional hearings have been held over the last two years investigating this malfeasance, with cases on their way to the Supreme court. One was referred to by federal judges as the most significant First Amendment case in a century. Congressional Democrats fought it every step of the way, and most of the coastal media outlets carried water for it. Book banning is a horrid violation, but at least it's done by elected representatives. This larger censorship project was carried out in secret at a national level. We need to be worried about that too, it's frankly a much larger issue than this.