In recognition of Banned Books Week, the Flintridge Bookstore last Thursday celebrated with a panel of residents and writers to discuss the awareness around banned books and their personal experiences with it.
The act of banning a book begins when a parent, community member, school district, teacher or politician deem a book’s content to be inappropriate for consumption, typically for children.
Well-known books including “Hunger Games,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Catcher in the Rye” are among the long list of books that have been banned in libraries and schools across the United States, according to The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, or OIF.
“Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31, 2023, OIF reported 695 attempts to censor library materials and services and documented challenges to 1,915 unique titles — a 20% increase from the same reporting period in 2022, which saw the highest number of book challenges since ALA began compiling the data more than 20 years ago,” stated the American Library Association’s website. “The vast majority of challenges were to books written by or about a person of color or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community.”
The book store’s panel on Oct. 5 was a close-knit conversation between the four speakers and about 15 community members.
Gail Mishkin, the bookstore’s event, marketing and author manager, kicked off the discussion with a quote from the event’s moderator, author Benin Lemus.
“Book banning isn’t just about taking books off shelves, it’s about severing our connection to our fellow citizens — the ones we know and the people we will never meet,” she quipped. “One of the most powerful outcomes of reading is that it creates a sense of unity that has the capacity to change us for the better. When we read, we become more fully realized people. We must guard that right at all costs.”
With an increase of books being challenged or banned, Mishkin said that over the past year, books in public libraries accounted for 49% of those challenged. She said that some libraries have been threatened with closure for refusing to remove certain titles from their shelves.
“These events impact all of us,” said Mishkin.
Flintridge Bookstore manager Robert Gibbs and La Cañada Flintridge Library Manager Mark Totten, both among the panel, gave the audience a taste of what they’ve observed within the city of LCF and if banned books are an issue.
“We’re not really being challenged,” said Totten. “We heard about it [a few years ago], but it was just not common. And [now], it just seems like every day, there’s something in the media about this.”
Totten spoke about various librarians getting death threats and others quitting, and with communities no longer funding libraries.
“So, I’m actually kind of grateful to be here in La Cañada [and] California, because at least the community here understands, for the most part, you know, they want to. They understand the importance of reading, and they have access, and they’re not trying to restrict it.”
Gibbs agreed with Totten and spoke about the importance of giving a voice to different perspectives in the bookstore.
“I tried to be cognizant of that as a buyer to have a range of different perspectives that are on the shelves,” said Gibbs. “More broadly within the community here, we’re lucky in this area; it’s not a hugely pressing problem. But the question of books that are that are challenged or that are controversial, we are aware of those and sometimes that plays into thinking about placement within the store and how we want to feature things.”
Panelist and author Andrea Loney talked about her experience about getting her first book, “Bunnybear,” banned in Iowa.
“It’s a book about being loved and accepted for who you are,” said Loney.
The book’s purpose, said Loney, is for children to feel like they have a place in the world, no matter who they are.
Loney added that she has since continued to write more books and produce more content for newer books like, “Abby in Orbit,” which tells the story of an Afro Latina girl who lives on the international space station in the year 2051.
“I’m first generation American [on my dad’s side of the family] and something I don’t always see reflected a lot,” said Loney. “And I especially don’t see Black people speaking Spanish being reflected a lot.”
Banning books doesn’t even work, Loney explained. Though the book might not be available to read, the banning of it doesn’t change the author’s views or who they represent, said Loney.
People might think “There’s no problem because the book is gone. But the people who the books are about are still here, except now you have people who don’t see themselves, so they think every problem that they have is like a personal failing of their own as opposed to the systemic things that go on and all that other stuff,” said Loney.
“But on the other hand, I am not going to turn into another color, religion, sexual orientation, whatever it is that people want me to be, just because they banned the book,” she said. “I’m still here.”
The event moderator, Lemus — who is also an author — brought up the threat of access to funding and if that has affected Totten and Gibbs in their respected organizations.
“Fortunately, in my 20-something years, nobody’s ever challenged anything of that nature,” said Totten.
Totten talked about the process of challenging a book within the Los Angeles County system, to which the LCF Library belongs, and involves filling out a form and identifying specific passages in the book deemed offensive. He said that when a child checks out library materials, parents receive an email of what they checked out to show transparency. But Totten noted he has also heard the idea of people restricting what adults can read in certain libraries, which has bothered him.
Gibbs, as the bookstore manager, also discussed the process of the store and that they do not practice any policy of keeping certain books away from people.
“We’re in a fortunate position,” said Gibbs. “We’ve been fortunate to the extent that we haven’t had to deal with a great deal of community pushback when we’ve carried books that might be objectionable. And I’m certain that we do carry books that are objectionable to all sorts of different viewpoints.”
He finds that it is part of his job to closely listen to customers and help them find exactly what they want.
“I find that that’s a big part of my job is trying to figure out what people are looking for, what values they’re bringing to the table, and then trying to serve them something that they want,” said Gibbs.
Lemus redirected the conversation to ask what the panelists wish they could talk about instead, since book banning can become a very negative conversation.
Totten talked about the beauty of his job and why he became a librarian in the first place.
“This week, a little girl came in, and she had a book in her hand about dragons, she liked dragons, but it was like a 300-page book,” said Totten. “I got her some [more simple] books, and I love it. That’s why I became a librarian. And I do this also for adults.”
Loney, who also teaches computer and writing classes to adults, likes to see how the culture changes with each year and each student.
“There’s a whole bunch of people who are finally getting to see themselves represented and finally feeling whole inside, and whole people make whole societies,” said Loney.
Gibbs talked about the importance of change as well, and how he has seen a lot of representation in books throughout his time in the bookstore.
“If you have a perspective or an interest, or an ideological viewpoint, you can be served now, to a much greater degree than we could in the past,” said Gibbs. “And I think that’s a good thing.”
He also talked about the importance of having a local bookstore and the beauty of getting lost in the endless cycle of book covers and interests.
“There are realities to being a physical bookstore,” said Gibbs. “We often cannot get people the books as cheaply as they can find online, we can be competitive to a certain extent, but there are moments when we can’t, and people will sometimes be aggrieved at that.
“I think that it is a way to fight against the impulse to ban things and to get rid of them,” he added. “Having a place where you can find the world of ideas, of all sorts of different ideas, available to you physically — that’s an important experience.”
Although the bookstore has celebrated Banned Books Week in previous years, this is the first time they held a panel discussion, said Mishkin.
“Benin Lemus, our moderator, approached me after participating in a similar panel for LitFest,” Mishkin told the Outlook Valley Sun. “Her experience as a public school librarian directly connects her to issues surrounding book banning. From there, I wanted to find panelists with different backgrounds and perspectives.”
Mishkin said that the bookstore doesn’t sell all the books that have been challenged in the last year, “but we have many and a selection of those are on our Banned Books Week display at the front entrance of the store.”
First published in the October 12 print issue of the Outlook Valley Sun.
