Librarians from the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library are encouraging patrons to read books that have been prohibited from shelves all over the country.
Authors, artists and educators gather in San José to host events denouncing censorship for Banned Books Week.
Estella Inda, a research services and social sciences librarian, is one of the coordinators for Banned Books Week at the library.
“As a librarian, it is my job to connect everyone with the resources that provide them with information they seek,” Inda said. “I do this without judgment, without deciding what resources they should have access to based on my own beliefs.”
She said librarians provide the information that allows people to develop their own opinions and conclusions.
Banned Books Week was established in 1982 by librarian and activist Judith Fingeret Krug alongside the American Library Association, according to the National Council of Teachers of English.
This event has promoted the protection of library materials from censorship annually since its establishment, according to the Banned Books Week website.
“For me specifically, it has inspired me to take action and educate,” Inda said. “The King Library now has an established banned book collection and I am more driven than ever to ensure that we have a variety of programs planned to make (San José State) and (the) local community aware of the different censorship issues that are occurring nationwide.”
As of August 31, at least 1,128 unique titles have been challenged in 414 cases of attempted censorship of library materials in 2024, according to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.
The office also notes that these statistics are only a “snapshot” of access restrictions throughout the U.S., as up to 97% may go unreported.
Tiffany Bradford-Oldham, senior librarian for the San José Public Library, finds these objections to the material are often baseless.
“I started off my career as a children's librarian in Kentucky, and so we would get maybe a challenge a week,” Bradford-Oldham said. “The first thing I would always ask folks is, ‘Have you read the book?’ And you'll be surprised how often they had not.”
A library challenge occurs when a person or group requests a restriction on access to materials based on content objections, which can eventually lead to the removal of the item from a collection, according to the American Library Association.
Approximately 33% of titles that are challenged in school libraries are removed or restricted, with LGBTQ+ books being the most likely to be removed, according to a Dec. 23, 2023 article from the Washington Post..
Bradford-Oldham highlighted the importance of keeping diverse stories on the shelves for marginalized children to see they are not alone.
“The first time that I had a true understanding of what it was like to be a black girl was when I was reading books about black girls,” she said. “Maybe their experiences are not the same as exactly what I was going through, but there is an undercurrent of that shared experience that's important for forming identity.”
LGBTQ+ stories and stories representing people of color are targeted disproportionately by bans, making up 47% of censorship attempts in 2023, according to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.
Bradford-Oldham said books about these topics are more often banned because they represent a threat to current hegemonic structures.
“If you are writing a book that challenges what is seen as the cultural norm,” she said. “In which we have to be honest and say the cultural norm is white, Eurocentric-focused, that's something that cannot be allowed.”
Eboni Harris, a TeensReach coordinator for the San José Public Library, said how censorship became an issue of awareness during her conversations with young people on the job.
“When you talk to students or younger people now, like I do work in the teen section, there are things that I was highly aware of,” Harris said. “Like, ‘Oh yeah, they don't want you to read this book because they believe it has negative portrayals of white people.’ ”
Texts such as “The 1619 Project,” which take a critical look at American history as it relates to institutional racism and discrimination, are often targeted for bans, according to Education Week
“I see it as an erasure of history,” Harris said. “The reason why we study history is so that we don't repeat past mistakes, but if those mistakes were never there for other people to learn from, then history repeats itself.”
During her work at Peninsula Library System, Harris said she received more book challenges than she did while working as a librarian in Texas.
“One thing I want more Californians to be aware of, they think, ‘Oh, California's so liberal, and we don't have the problems that they have in those southern states,’ ” Harris said. “That is untrue.”
Aideed Medina, a Pushcart Prize nominated poet, led the library’s “ ‘I’m with the Banned’: Poetic Justice with Aideed Medina” event on Sunday and spoke out against the “Parents Matter Act” placing limitations on Fresno County libraries.
“There are some people on the board there who have political aspirations and they know what little soundbite that works for the people that they're working for to get votes from,” Medina said.
The “Parents Matter Act” requires parental consent for minors to access “Age-Inappropriate Content” in Fresno County libraries and establishes a parent and guardian review committee to vet new books available in children’s libraries, according to a resolution from the County Fresno.
Medina said she faced discrimination and suppression of her words at a young age as a Mexican girl writing poetry, which inspired her advocacy for banned books.
“People say, ‘Why do you stand up and talk about book bannings and everything?’” Medina said. “Because I as a seven-year-old did not know the word prejudice, did not know the word racism, did not know the word literature, I did not know any of those things.”
Medina recounted a formative experience with a teacher in second grade who publicly ridiculed her poetry before launching racial epithets at her.
“I didn't know, but I knew that I had somehow made this woman my enemy with my words,” she said.
Banned Books Week events are scheduled to continue at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library until Saturday, featuring a lineup of presenters who are all preserving censored words in their own way.
“We must always feel the freedom to express ourselves in the art that we read and the art that we create, and that is also the most beautiful form of resistance,” Medina said.
