A few weeks ago, it turns out, I had walking pneumonia. Then I was contacted by a journalist for the Deseret Magazine for some comments about the sharp rise of book challenges across the country. In response to one of his questions, I said something that bordered on incoherence. That happens sometimes when you're quoted. (Maybe it happens more often when you have pneumonia.) I don't blame the author, who doublechecked the recording. I blame me. I conflated two things I think into one mismash that I don't. So I wanted to clarify my comments. I was trying to speak about two kinds of challenges: the ones that try to reduce the real horror of slavery and racism portrayed in Beloved by Toni Morrison to nothing more than "too sexy," and the ones that paint the whole of another work, The Little House in the Prairie books, for instance, as being comprehensively racist, when that isn't the point of those works, either. In the end, most censorship challenges are redu
After giving a couple of talks on this topic, I was invited to submit an article to the Texas Library Journal, which comes out today. I'm reposting it here. Embedding professional values takes time, and grows from social context Professions are predicated on values. In 1892, the American Library Association (ALA) was guided by this modest motto: "The best books for the most people at the least cost." In 1938, Des Moines Public Library director, Forrest Spaulding, noted that, "Today indications in many parts of the world point to growing intolerance, suppression of free speech and censorship affecting the rights of minorities and individuals." Among those indications was the rise of Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, and Stalin in the Soviet Union. Books under attack in Des Moines eventually included Mein Kampf (anti-Semitic) and Grapes of Wrath (communist). In response, Spaulding pitched a "Library's Bill of Rights" to his board. In 1939,