Jennie Pu, New Jersey’s librarian of the year, talks with NPR’s Steve Inskeep about new estimates on the number of book bans happening across the country, and what’s being done to offset them.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It’s Banned Books Week. Somebody mentioned this at our news meeting the other day and somebody else responded, well, what is Banned Books Week? Is that a week when we go around banning books? No, no, it is not, it is not. Banned Books Week highlights books that are taken off shelves in libraries and schools. And new research by PEN America found more than 10,000 instances of book bans in the last school year, which is a lot. Jennie Pu is going to discuss this with us. She is director of the Hoboken Public Library in New Jersey and, wow, New Jersey’s librarian of the year. Good morning and congratulations.
JENNIE PU: Good morning, Steve. Thank you so much for having me on.
INSKEEP: And you’ve got a beautiful library in Hoboken where I lived years ago. What do you make of these new findings?
PU: You know, they confirm what’s been happening. The PEN report and American Library Association report shows that censorship is really still unprecedented. It’s at an all-time high. I think what’s remarkable about the PEN America report is that we’re seeing – this is what we see when bad legislation is put into place. You know, 8,000 of those bans took place in just two states alone. And what’s remarkable is that…
INSKEEP: Two states are – I’m guessing Florida. What’s the other state?
PU: Iowa. I think Florida and Iowa, according to the PEN report. But what’s remarkable is, you know, the majority of Americans actually don’t support censorship and it’s across the political spectrum. So what we’re seeing being enacted is really still a handful of people who are motivated, driven by a political agenda, really trying to suppress and deny our basic rights, our civil rights, freedom to speech, freedom to thought. And, frankly, we’ve had enough. And we’re fighting back in the courts and in everyday, you know, action in our libraries and our lives.
INSKEEP: Now, we’ve had a lot of reporting on this on NPR. And I think you’re correct when you say it’s a minority. It’s a small number of people who will be an activist…
PU: It is.
INSKEEP: …In a community very often. And they’ll go to the school board, and they’ll push for different things. But let me present the pushback to you. People who are in favor of this kind of book banning will say it’s not actually a book ban. We’re not, like, banning the book in the whole town or the county. We’re getting it out of the children’s section of the library, or we’re getting it out of the school, because we think it’s inappropriate. How do you respond to that?
PU: I say one ban for one person is one ban for all. And what we’re seeing is the effects. You know, 8,000 books removed in school libraries, definitely that is censorship in practice.
INSKEEP: And have you had this experience in Hoboken, N.J.? Have people come to you and said, what are you doing with this particular book on the shelves?
PU: Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, libraries have – we’ve received book bans, you know, one at a time over the years, but we haven’t seen an acceleration like this. Now, last year in Hoboken, we held a wonderful citywide banned book read-a-thon that got the attention of these conservative groups, and we got attacked on social media. And what we realized was all the attacks came from outside our community. And so after this wonderful book ban read-a-thon happened, we went the extra step and we decided to make a public statement of our values, which is we believe in the freedom of thought. We believe in the importance to free speech and became the first book sanctuary in New Jersey.
INSKEEP: Book sanctuary? What does that mean?
PU: A book sanctuary is a place where we protect the freedom to read. We collect endangered stories, we make them accessible and we hold events around them. And to date, we have 34 book sanctuary libraries in New Jersey and four book sanctuary municipalities in the state. And anyone can start their own.
INSKEEP: Jennie Pu of the Hoboken Public Library. Thanks so much.
PU: Thank you.
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