Today October 7, 2023 has been designated Let Freedom Read Day.
As a professional librarian I’ve unwittingly become what author Ibram X. Kendi calls a Freedom Fighter.
I wrote before in a blog entry here that our constitutional right to free speech has become illegal in Texas, Florida, and multiple other states.
Book banning is only the tip of this censorship iceberg.
I urge you to consider getting a library card and checking out books to your heart’s content.
In the 1950s John Lewis the former elected leader of Georgia was 16 and went to the local public library to get a library card.
He was told Black persons couldn’t get a library card. This likely provoked him to become a civil rights activist.
Sixty years later Lewis published a book that won the National Book Award–our nation’s highest literary honor.
It’s chilling to me the history of how Black persons were not allowed to get library cards.
Which is why I urge everyone of all colors and creeds to get a library card. You will likely need to show ID and proof of current address to sign up for one.
I’ve checked out over 2,500 items with my library card. So I’ve become a Power User. I received a black aluminum Power User water bottle and an ivory Power User tote bag.
Plus a silver library card with the Power User label on it.
This program is for individuals with a Brooklyn Public Library card.
I’ve read the banned books New Kid and Between the World and Me.
My reading history is curious.
Unlike if I were a young kid in Texas or Florida whose parent didn’t want them to read books about Black history–not the American history that excluded Black experience–I had the opposite thing happen.
In the sixth grade I fell in love with reading Little House on the Prairie books.
When I entered seventh grade my mother forbid me to read them again. She told me I could only read teen and adult books.
I was a 13-year old white girl and checked out Nikki Giovanni poetry books then.
This gets at the quote in the Hip-Hop blog entry where I quoted Big Sean.
The artist spoke about not allowing other people to dictate how he felt about himself.
His quote mirrored the famous Eleanor Roosevelt quote: “No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.”
The media darlings use hateful and hurtful rhetoric that only serves to sow division not unite Americans for our common good: that good being the healing and recovery from what’s going on.
More than a culture war going on I’ve coined the term “shame war” to talk about how people attack and label others.
We cannot continue to internalize shame.
How could reading about Critical Race Theory cause a teenager to feel ashamed. That’s what the parents think who try to ban books.
Whoever we are we should not allow ourselves to feel ashamed.
Reading books is an act of self-development. It’s a free college of knowledge when you check books out of a public library.
Teenagers are being denied the right to read books and to think for themselves about what they’re reading.
It’s a slippery slope America is going down.
We cannot give up on ourselves and our future.
First the right to read whatever we want is taken away.
Segueing into causing young people to give up on reading altogether.
Please I urge readers to get a library card and check out books to read.
Today multiple libraries across the U.S. no longer impose late fees.
As long as you return any item the late fee will be waived.
Come on join the new Freedom Fight.
Read all the books you want about whatever topic you want.
Left of the Dial 