Books

At the end of Drabinski’s essay, she provides an account of a trip she took across the country to visit and document American librarians doing the work of keeping books on their shelves. “Everywhere I went,” she writes, “I met people fighting together for a world where all of us can be free.” The “us” here is particular: she’s referring to the marginalized voices most often attacked by book banners. But it’s also universal. If we want to keep American minds free from harmful moral prejudices, narrow and bland aesthetic standards, the invasion of tech oligarchs and profit-driven curricula in our classrooms—from everything, in other words, that book banners of all forms promote—then we must commit, together, to defending books and their readers.