Confronting Book Banning

Southern communities are facing an unprecedented, and frankly frightening, upswell in book challenges and book banning initiatives. No longer the result of individual complaints, book banning has become a politicized tool increasingly showing up in local and state legislation, where not only individual books, but entire topics (usually lumped under the heading of "gender studies" or "critical race theory" ) are being removed from school curricula and standardized testing.

As booksellers, it is easy to know how to feel in the face of these challenges, but it is more difficult, as small business owners, to know how to respond.

SIBA encourages booksellers to revisit the recording of the 2021 NVNR Banned Books Panel, featuring a conversation between Amy Sarig King (The War of the Black Rectangles), Sam Droke-Dickerson of Aaron's Books, and David Grogan from the American Booksellers for Free Expression (ABFE) .

The event also had a lively audience participation in the chat, where booksellers shared resources they found helpful when dealing with local book challenges. You can find links to those in in the SIBA blog.

Note, especially, the Banned Books Action Items sheet from Sam Droke-Dickerson, which provides a number of concrete steps stores can take to respond to book challenges in their own communities.