The Librarians - A Documentary
I encourage everyone to watch The Librarians, an Independent Lens documentary on PBS. It covers the plight of librarians across the country who are being forced to remove books from the shelves of their libraries. They are being demonized, terrorized, and fired for simply doing their jobs.
Several things emerged from the film. While book bans are not new, the sheer number of books these groups are trying to ban today is staggering. They claim to be protecting children, but hiding truth from children is not protection. What they are actually doing is suppressing the free exchange of ideas, whitewashing history, and eliminating any viewpoint or culture that doesn’t align with their own.
They are not simply trying to decide what their children can read, but also what other people’s children can access and read.
One book that is a perfect example of this fight is Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry, a children’s picture book about a Black father styling his daughter’s hair. It faced banning attempts across many schools and libraries, by critics who said it was “divisive” or “indoctrination.”
Many of my favorite books frequently appear on these lists: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple, The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, and The Bluest Eye.
A priest featured in the documentary offered a phrase that has stayed with me. He called the members of these groups wicked geniuses. They are not stupid. They know exactly what they are doing. They understand that if they can shape one or two generations of young people, they can move closer to their goal of Christian nationalism. And their strategy is aided by a simple, uncomfortable truth: not enough people read. And those who do rarely choose books that challenge them.
These groups claim to champion freedom, but the freedom they actually support is the freedom of everyone else to agree with them. Their culture. Their way of life. Their belief system. Nothing more.
A piece about one of the women in the documentary: