With all the free time we have during the holidays (she says with a wink), I thought I’d introduce you to some good books that might help fill all those hours when you’re not baking, decorating, stress shopping, wrapping, etc. In honor of Dewey Decimal System Day observed on the December 10 birthday of its creator, Melvil Dewey, let’s start at the very beginning of the Dewey Decimal system, the 000s, “Computer Science, Information, and General Works.”
Now, hold on – no yawning! It’s a lot more interesting than it sounds – we’re going into the ‘Library and Information Sciences’ sub-section featuring a couple of award-winning new releases! These are books on reading – it can’t get any better than that! These selections enlighten us in the age-old struggle with censorship, and show us how books can ultimately save us.
The first statements in the American Library Association Library Bill of Rights are: “Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people… presenting all points of view on current and historical issues… Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.”
The author of our first selection, middle school librarian Amanda Jones did just that; she took up the mantle of challenging censorship, writing about her experience in national bestseller That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America. Jones, a School Library Journal School Librarian of the Year, spoke out at a 2022 public hearing held at her local library in Louisiana which was called to discuss book content (her speech appends her memoir). Because what she values most about books is how they can affirm a young person’s sense of self, she addressed the group on the fundamental right of the freedom to read, especially decrying the banning of those books about diverse minority groups whose voices her students need to hear.
‘That librarian,’ Amanda Jones, however, was promptly attacked and slandered via e-mail and on social media, and even received death threats, by persons who were revealed to be extremists using book banning campaigns funded by dark money organizations—as well as by some friends and family. Jones shares her harrowing journey in fighting back, suing those who waged attacks against her, as well as chronicling similar current issues across America. She urges the reader, “Everyone in the United States should stand up for intellectual freedom and stand against censorship, regardless of party line. You start banning one thing, and you’re on a slippery slope to banning everything.”
The importance of accessibility to disparate voices in literature is apparent in our complementary selection awarded as the NPR Best Book of the Year, Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me by Glory Edim. Founder of the Well-Read Black Girl book club, the author has grown it into a network reaching half a million readers. Edim, daughter of Nigerian immigrants, took her title from one of the books and authors who has spoken to her over the years, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, “She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”
For Glory Edim, it is books that have gathered her, healing her throughout the traumas of her life: her father whom she adored leaving the family and returning to Nigeria, and her mother’s years suffering from debilitating depression. As a child these circumstances forced Edim to take on the responsibilities of an adult. She and her brother found respite in their local library where she found community and began, through reading, to find her own value and voice.
As she grew, and into adulthood, she gathered around herself black women authors who comforted her, taught her, and aided in her growth. She writes, “Toni Morrison compelled me to hone in on my vision. Maya Angelou urged me to take more risks. Alice Walker drove me to build something outside of myself. Somehow their intricate stories and astute observations provided me with an unbreakable foundation.”
She related to their stories and the women behind them. Their books and others’ saved her. Each of us deserves to be saved; each of us deserves to be able to see ourselves in a book.