With book bans, Texas librarians are on the frontlines of a culture war

Texas might not be the ground zero of book-banning; as in so many reactionary, censorious matters, it still has to contend with Florida. But the state still loves to tell people, especially young people, what they can and cannot read. The new documentary The Librarians, which showed at the South By Southwest Film & TV Festival after premiering at Sundance in January, digs into some of the “Thou Shalt Not Read” hotspots, including the Texas city of Granbury and Llano County, both of which targeted school librarians for daring to distribute books that suggest LGBTQ people are human and American race relations haven’t been peachy.

More optimistically, Kim A. Snyder’s film spotlights some of the librarians who have somehow found themselves on the frontlines of the culture wars. Unlike their attackers, who have threatened them with everything from loss of livelihood to loss of life, they generally aren’t ideologues, unless you think believing in freedom of information is an ideology. Fending off hard right school boards with members often elected by the power of dark money corporate contributions, they just don’t like being told how to do their jobs on the whim of religious (and brazenly unconstitutional) fiat. The film is both grim, encapsulating the ease and viciousness with which miniature theocracies can install themselves in public education, and inspiring, offering portraits of some who choose to fight back.

Among them is Suzette Baker, the former head of the Llano County library system, who was fired when she refused to remove books, including Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me and Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist from the shelves. She’s a self-assured Army veteran with a quick wit: “I have to show you the children’s library, because that’s where our porn is,” she tells the filmmakers. It’s a bitterly ironic joke: Today’s book banners like to create a squall by publicly screeching that books like Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Jonathan Evison’s Lawnboy are grooming kids through pornography.

To read the article in its entirety visit: How some Texas librarians are fighting the book banning culture war