In the last few months I have been working as one of the leaders of the Rhode Island Freedom to Read Coalition, a grassroots effort to support legislation in Rhode Island to protect library staff and reject efforts to unfairly censor library materials based on political ideology. We have been working with legislators and are supporting two identical Rhode Island bills, SB 0238 and HB 5726.
Our coalition is made up of librarians, educators, moms, professors, teachers, advocates, authors, publishers, booksellers, ministers, rabbis, mental health professionals, and others who care deeply about the First amendment.
As part of my work I have been reviewing studies, laws, data, information, and other materials on book banning to better understand why there has been a significant increase in book banning attempts. What I have come to understand from this research is that there is a lack of information about the harm that censorship does to those we should be trying to protect.
According to Pen America, “[o]verwhelmingly, book bans target books on race or racism or featuring characters of color…” Not talking about racism, not reading about racism, not acknowledging our country’s history of slavery, white supremacy, mass incarceration, colonization, and housing discrimination does not prevent racism. We do not protect children, adolescents, and students by denying them access to books about Ruby Bridges and Rosa Parks. We harm them, and our country.
Book bans also frequently target books with LGBTQ+ characters, according to Pen America. The American Library Association gives this phenomenon a number stating, “Titles representing the voices and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals made up 47 percent of those targeted in censorship attempts” in 2023. Again, denying access to books by or about someone who is queer does not make anyone less queer. George M. Johnson, author of “All Boys Are Not Blue,” has stated, “Removing books from [teens] doesn’t stop them from having those same experiences. It just stops them from being able to know what to do when those experiences happen to them.” Banning books with LGBTQIA content sends the message that LGBTQIA people are not worth being authors or not worth having stories told about them.
Pen America also states that books that depict rape or sexual violence were banned in a quarter of the more than 3,000 books targeted from June 2022 to July 2023. Silencing stories of rape and sexual violence silences survivors of rape and sexual violence. Banning books by and about the survival of rape and sexual assault perpetuates harm on those who have suffered the most. Authors can find power in telling their stories, factually or through fiction. Readers can find solace and community in these same stories. We are harming them by removing their stories from libraries.
The National Women’s Law Center describes this impact poignantly in a recent blog post stating, “But banning these books signals there is something shameful and obscene in talking about sexual abuse, even though so many people, including students, have experienced it. These bans further stigmatize and legitimize silence around sexual violence, sending a message to survivors that what happened to you doesn’t matter, and an even broader message that silence about sexual violence is preferred over awareness about it. And these bans prevent student survivors from accessing stories that reflect their experiences—often painful and isolating experiences—barring many survivors from finding support, validation, and healing.”
My question is: Who are we protecting? If not our LGBTQIA teens, our BIPOC children, our public library staff, our school librarians, our children’s book authors, our survivors of sexual assault, then who? And why?
The bills that have been put forward do not mandate that any child, adolescent, student, or parent be required to read any book. The bills don’t mandate libraries purchase any book or type of book. They don’t require that authors and illustrators write or draw or create any specific book or type of book. In fact, they make clear that reconsideration requests made by those with a vested interest in the public library or school library can still continue. And library staff will be protected by not just the Miller test – a legal standard used to determine if material is obscene – but by state law.
Let Rhode Island continue to grow and change in the direction of Roger Williams himself. May his words be adapted today to read, “God requireth not a uniformity of library materials to be purchased and available in any civil state.”
Nicole P. Dyszlewski is one of the leaders of the Rhode Island Freedom to Read Coalition, and a professor and assistant dean at Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, R.I.