Online/Virtual Event

Thursday, February 22nd 2024 from 4:00pm to 5:00pm

Emily J. M. Knox, associate professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, joined Mary Bakija, Program Manager at METRO Library Council, for a discussion on her book, Book Banning In 21st-Century America, on Thursday,  February 22. Below is a transcript of the conversation, which has been edited for clarity and length.

Mary Bakija: To set some stage for our audience today as you did in your work, we'll be referring to people who put in requests for books to be removed, restricted, or relocated from libraries or curricula as challengers. Can you explain why you chose that terminology rather than something to do with banning or censoring?

Emily Knox: There are a couple of reasons. Generally in the freedom of expression world, we call them challengers because censor has a very negative connotation. I actually have an article on how being called a censor is similar to being called a racist. Also, when you call someone a censor, it focuses on the outcome as opposed to the process, to their request. The request is that something happens to this material. They have challenged where this material is located in a public institution. Yes, they may want to censor something, but that does not actually mean that that will be the outcome.

MB: Why might it be important for librarians, educators, and others facing these challenges to understand the worldviews and motivations of these challenges?

EK: What I think is so fascinating about people who challenge books is that they think that books are important. I'm often confronted by people who think these people are ignorant, they don't believe in reading, those sorts of things. But in fact, what I try to get to in my work is that people who challenge books actually truly believe in reading. They believe books will change lives. I think this is important for librarians and library workers to know because if you understand it from that point of view, you are getting a truer idea of what they're saying, which is not so much that, "I don't think that reading is good," but that, "I think that reading is so powerful that I want to remove this work this book from your collection because It will make people the type of person that I don't want them to be." 

Most people who work in libraries tend to like books. I have people read books to change their knowledge structures, what they understand about the world. We believe that books can be a democratizing agent. Where we differ is that, in librarianship, we don't know what that outcome will be. So people who challenge books, they worry that they know what will happen if you read this book. But if you think about our ethics and the Library Bill of Rights, I don't know what might happen if you read this book. You might be introduced to all sorts of things, and you may or may not agree with them. That's the difference. 

MB: Something you touched on a bit there is how much fear there is for what change might come after reading a book. One of the more interesting fears that you note in your book is this idea of "difficult knowledge," where books or the ideas that are presented in them are things that adults find challenging to grapple with themselves, and so it's even harder to imagine doing that with their kids. Can you talk about how fear plays into book banning?

EK: This is Kerry H. Robinson's theory, and I think it really encapsulates what goes on when people think about banning a book, especially for children. There are a lot of topics that are very difficult to discuss. I was just at a public hearing where a woman said, "I don't want my child to learn anything about sex." In any way, heterosexual, homosexual. You could tell that it's the discussion of sex that is difficult. How do you talk to your children about this? Lot of the topics that are being challenged right now are really actually quite difficult to discuss. How do you talk about what gender is? We have a lot of easy ways of saying it like gender and sexuality are not the same thing, but how do you explain that to someone who's 7? In our society we don't have good sex education, we don't have a shared understanding of our history, and that is really what comes up in these book challenges.

MB: And we don't have the kind of language to discuss these things in life, in general. You mention that in the book, too, about how providing kids with the language to discuss these things is sometimes of vital importance in their lives. Can you talk about that? 

EK: When I work on the new edition, I'm going to extend this to adults, because what these books also do is give adults language to be able to discuss these things.

The most impactful anecdote I can think of about this idea is how Robie Harris, the author of It's Perfectly Normal, talked about how a parent came up to her and said, "Your book saved my child's life." There is a discussion of sexual abuse in the book, and the parent said that her child came up to her and said, "This is what my daddy does to me." Would the child have been able to say that without that book, to be able to verbalize the horrific thing that was being done to them? Because of that book, the child was removed from the situation. 

But it doesn't even have to be that traumatic. The thing about books like Gender Queer is that they tell you about a person who lives a different life. I read that book, and being non-binary is not something I know much about. That book gave me more language, more understanding. This is really what books can do, they help you think more about other people, whether you agree with them or not.

MB: One thing that happens a lot with book challenges is that the discourse around them is all done by adults. You go to a meeting where people are talking about a book challenge, it's adults talking about kids. How much have kids been able to provide their own voices to these conversations?

EK: I was at a hearing on Tuesday. There were not many kids there. There were some young people, maybe 16 or 17, but there were no children at all. This was an argument between adults. 

We need to train kids to be leaders on freedom of expression in their communities. I tell people that if something comes up, encourage your kid to go to the meeting. They are welcome to do public comment. The kids actually have the most powerful voices. The other thing about this is that they'll see democracy in action, and all other sorts of really great things.

Getting more kids' voices involved in this is vitally important. There are so many examples of how organizing has worked over history. On the one hand, it's a little disheartening that we keep having to do it, but it's also very lovely to see.

MB: Something that comes up a lot in your work is the issue of the public's distrust in established experts like librarians and educators, particularly when it comes to "protecting" kids and establishing the "right" development for them. What have you learned about that?

EK: One thing is that these are feminized professions. It's difficult to be seen as an expert when you're in a feminized profession. In fact, in our society, we see things like education, learning to read, as things could happen in the home. It also gets reified in this very strange way, because by definition if you are working in a library and you are a woman, then you are not doing your thing at home. So this all gets kind of messed up together. 

Also, people have no idea what librarians do. People do not know how the books get on the shelf. When you explain it to them, it doesn't make sense, they don't quite get it. When it seems like your expertise is black boxed, it's difficult to convince people of it in many ways. 

The challenge cases are really overdetermined because they're not about libraries or schools at all, they're about all sorts of other things. They're about books, but not about books. They're all of these issues wrapped up. 

MB: You mention that you don't see challengers to be political actors exactly, but that it was better for your study to explore their arguments using sociotheoretical frameworks. Can you explain that? And have your feelings changed at all about that since this was published back in 2015?

EK: I see my research work as being about book history and print culture. The thing is, some challengers are political actors, and some of them aren't. Some of them are really upset about taxes going to institutions that they don't like. But some of them are much more focused on, "I don't want my child to know about that," which is not quite the same thing as being against the institution itself. What I try to say to people is that I take challengers' arguments seriously, and I try not to group them all together as just one thing.

We are seeing more attacks on public institutions. At the end of that board meeting I was at, somebody said, "I don't want my taxes to go to this library anymore." That is pretty much where we are headed. Because the library is in many ways a socialist institution where people share their resources. It becomes an issue of control. By definition, you don't control public institutions. There can be accountability in them. But any given taxpayer does not control the public institution. That makes a lot of people very upset.

MB: Your second edition is expected in 2025. What have you been updating?

EK: One thing I did not talk about was diverse books, so I will be talking about what they are, why they get challenged. Then I kind of smush together public schools and public libraries in the book. I will talk just a bit about some work I've done, just so people know that I understand that those are all different things. Also, I was a witness for a Senate hearing on book banning and so I'm going to probably add a chapter on that as well. In my article, "Silencing Voices," I talk about how LGBTQI books are always about sex, no matter whether they have sex in them or not, so I'm doing a bit more research on why that is understood that way. But the thing is, the arguments have not changed a lot.

MB: Have you ever had any personal or professional ethical challenges as you're doing this research?

EK: When I talk about freedom of expression and intellectual freedom, I understand people not wanting to inflict harm on others. We have been talking a lot about diverse books lately, but before this all happened, I was mostly talking about challenges from the left, and thinking about: Why is it important to not engage in some censorship practices for books that you might consider to be harmful? I'm a big believer in separating professional and personal ethics. Also, I think this goes to my issues of understanding, like you have to understand people's arguments to argue against them. I try to think about certain framings. And I realized that my frame is always that, in essence, this is where censorship leads. Because of how power works in our society, it is inevitable that the most marginalized voices will be silenced. So I spent a lot of time arguing with people about whether this is a harmful book, especially about anti-trans books. What I try to get people to understand is that yes, this is a book that could be harmful. We don't know the outcome of that. But when you start arguing, "What will happen when someone reads a particular book?" That always ends up with someone else saying, "Well, I am not going to let this other person, whose voice we rarely hear, speak."

You can't learn about social justice without intellectual freedom because by definition the people who do not want a more just society will censor books that have to do with justice. So I try to keep myself grounded in that.

MB: An audience question: Are you aware of a best practices outline for book challenge policies?

EK: The Intellectual Freedom Manual is being updated. I believe there are updated practices. You can call the Office of Intellectual Freedom and they'll send you the updated practices. Some of them include a finality clause—so if a decision is made on a book, it cannot be revisited within three to five years. When a decision is made, that is it. There are other things about having to read the book. I like the one where someone has to suggest an alternative book, that's always very interesting. I've also heard of libraries charging fees for the request for reconsideration. Please talk to your attorney first, run this by a few people before you institute something like that, but it is something to think about because challenges take time. This is of course somewhat of a gamification, to lessen the amount of forms that come through.

Finally, just make sure your policies are up to date. It's not that everybody will follow the policies, but you have to be able to say when someone didn't follow the policies. Someone might come to the board meeting, but you want your board to ask if they followed the policy. That is also enforceable in court.

MB: Another audience question: Do you think that the legislation in West Virginia will affect libraries in other states that seek to enact similar legislation allowing prosecution of librarians? Do you expect librarians to leave their positions, or for there to be arrests?

EK: I do expect librarians to leave their positions and significant numbers. We're already seeing this. It's also true of teachers. Who wants to be bothered? That's really what it is. There might be arrests. That's very possible given our current climate in the country. They will be in the states that you expect them to be in. I would never say that that would not happen. The actual strategy is about chilling effects. It's not so much about arresting somebody, it's about putting the fear of being arrested in somebody's mind. In fact, that has already been effective. The fear that something could happen is actually all that is needed.

MB: A lot of these workers leaving has to do with not just with the pandemic and how that's led to an overtaxed system of workers, but now these issues are added to that. What are some ways this burned out segment of workers can protect ourselves and our colleagues so that we're not facing arrest for the work that we do?

EK: You can show up if something happens. That's one big thing to do. The board meeting I went to was overwhelmingly pro-library. People don't actually like people messing with their library. That so many people showed up in support of the library makes a big difference.

MB: Is there one takeaway that you'd like to leave people with?

EK: Read banned books. There's a list of 850 from Representative Krause that were challenged in Texas. There are lists all over the place. Purchase these books for your libraries. I'm not so worried about the top-list challenges, it's the mid-list challenges that I worry about. Are those mid-list books getting on shelves? I hope so. Read these authors. Have diverse collections. Just do the things that libraries do.