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Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) took aim at one of the Right’s more pernicious Culture War issues Thursday, introducing a bill that would help fight back against censorship and ensure diverse reading options remain available in public schools and libraries. In a speech on the floor of the House, Pressley introduced the accurately named “Books Save Lives Act,” which would classify attempts to remove books dealing with race, gender and sexuality as a federal civil rights violation. It would also require schools and libraries that get federal funding to include and maintain a diverse selection of materials, as we’ll booksplain in a bit.
Here’s Pressley’s brief speech, in which she recalls how reading Maya Angelou’s memoir I Know why the Caged Bird Sings (Wonkette-gets-a-cut link) helped save her own life, just one of so many times books have given someone the opportunity to experience other human minds, to know that they aren’t alone in this crazy stupid blessed awful world:
“As a child who endured sexual abuse, when I read Maya Angelou’s I Know why the Caged Bird Sings, it was the first time in my life I knew I was not alone, and it helped me move forward. So when I say that books save lives, I mean that. […]
“I urge my colleagues to support this legislation for all the people who are saved by books, each and every day.”
It’s not at all difficult to find school and public librarians who can tell you stories about someone who found solace in a book, who realized they could keep going on because they realized they weren’t alone, who recognized that other people have gone through what they have — to say nothing of the legions of people who recall books and libraries as life-savers. While writing this story we discovered a podcast called “This Queer Book Saved My Life,” with interview after interview of people talking about exactly that.
In an interview with HuffPost, Pressley said this isn’t just about personal taste in reading, it’s about lives:
“Rather than honor the brilliance and diversity of our authors, illustrators and librarians, Republicans are focused on further marginalizing people who already face systemic discrimination in our society ― including people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, religious minorities and people with disabilities ― through discriminatory book bans.”
To make it harder for bigots to gut public and school libraries, The Books Save Lives Act would
categorize book bans as discriminatory and, depending on the ban, a violation of multiple laws — including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, or the Education Amendments of 1972.
But wait, aren’t public schools and libraries off-limits to federal interference under the 10th Amendment? The bill invokes the power of the purse, a well-established tactic in lawmaking:
The bill applies to public libraries that receive federal financial assistance and schools controlled by local governments that receive federal financial assistance. The bill also describes underrepresented community members as people that fall into a racial or ethnic minority group; people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex or nonbinary; people who are members of a religious minority; or people who have a disability.
Oh no. Not equality!
In addition to the bill, Pressley also convened a meeting of Authors, Educators, & Advocates yesterday at the Library of Congress, to discuss book bans and why in US America, we don’t stand for that fascist nonsense. I’m looking forward to watching it!
This is a nation founded by nerds who read everything they could get their hands on, where ships from England or Europe were eagerly awaited for what new books they might bring. (Yes, and too many of those well-read nerds were also God-damned enslavers whose literacy made them no more humane. All the more reason we need books that can speak honestly about that history!)
I can’t wait for the weekend to start so I can read. Yep, still on Martha Wells’s new Murderbot novel, but also the manga version of the delightful Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. And here’s the thing: Those may be science fiction and fantasy, respectively, but they’re also deeply humane pop-culture explorations of what makes us human. So there.
[HuffPost / Books Save Lives Act text / Rep. Ayanna Pressley]
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