NAGEL PHOTOGRAPHY/SHUTTERSTOCK
Not all libraries are as gorgeous as St. Louis' Central Library, but they all induce a flood of wonderful memories in Liz Chiarello.
As a child, library days were special. My mom and I went downtown to an enormous building packed floor to ceiling with books. I could select as many as five — a choice I made with great care — and take them home by simply handing over a little yellow card with my name typed on it.
Books opened up new worlds, dazzled with their images, and revealed the innermost thoughts of people different from me. I loved them as a child, and I love them now. That is why I was shocked when, in the span of one week, a town in my home state of Texas considered shuttering its libraries rather than returning banned books to the shelves, and lawmakers in my adopted state of Missouri voted to slash funds for the state’s public libraries. (The Senate later restored the library funding, but librarians remain fearful.)
Libraries are important for all kinds of reasons. They make reading exciting, of course. But they are also hotbeds of information, brimming with knowledge that makes an informed electorate and its corollary, democracy, possible. They are a critical part of our social safety net. Many, like those under threat in Llano, Texas, provide poor children with meals and offer people without homes a respite from the streets. They give folks who don’t have personal computers access to the internet and offer assistance with job applications and other social supports. There is something for everyone at the library.
I have to admit that books have gotten me into trouble. I was an avid Judy Blume reader, but my mom wanted me to wait until I was in sixth grade to read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, a book about a young girl who (*gasp*) gets her period. I didn’t wait. I couldn’t. In fourth grade, I checked the book out from the school library and hid it deep in my book bag away from my mother’s prying eyes. I would have gotten away with it, too, if my sister hadn’t spied me reading it and ratted me out. The book answered important questions about my changing body that I was too uncomfortable to ask. Would I have been better off if some cautious legislator had taken Judy Blume off the shelf? Many girls today have to face puberty without the benefit of the author’s wisdom. Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret is one of the most challenged books in recent history.
Blume is in good company. A recent report by PEN America found that book removals are escalating rapidly with Texas, Florida and Missouri leading the charge. At the height of irony, Fahrenheit 451 — the book about banning books — was also banned. “It was a pleasure to burn,” the book begins and goes on to describe a massive inferno in which the “flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house.” Our legislators have not yet resorted to fire, but banning books and defunding libraries have the same effect: depriving people of knowledge and critical services.
How dare anyone destroy precious institutions on which so many people depend. And for what? To ensure that a few books they don’t like can’t be read? Do elected officials care so little for democracy that they are willing to ride that slippery slope towards authoritarianism? It is, after all, repressive regimes such as Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa, and modern-day China that delight in banning books.
Or perhaps they simply do not know what I know, that books and the libraries that contain them are magic. If that is the case, I know just the cure: a trip to the library.
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