February is Black history month. Since Missouri is joining the rush to ban books by Black authors, I’m trying to read a few before they are yanked from the library shelves.
The local library is one of the main reasons we moved here. It has moved to a new, bigger facility, added DVDs, audio books and eBooks. It is part of a consortium of Missouri libraries so the range of materials available is huge.
Librarians and Books
This is a conservative town. When the librarians add books to the library shelves, they take this into consideration. The idea is to have books people want to check out to read.
Browsing down the aisles I see lots of mysteries, thrillers, historical fiction and romances. Westerns have their own section. The nonfiction area has books on religion, gardening, pets and livestock.
There are others, if you search. “I Am Malala” is there in the biography section along with John Wayne.
Young Adult Section
If the legislature has its way, this is where the purge will focus. “The Hate You Give” and “On the Come Up” are there along with books on suicide prevention, drugs and gender.
Such subjects might disturb some readers. The legislature wants to take them off the library shelves, burn them, make sure even those who want that information can’t see it.
That leaves those wanting information listening to people on the streets who may or may not know anything. It leaves people ignorant.
Perhaps that is the purpose. Controlling what is on library shelves controls what people know so they can be fed anything and have no way to know what is true and what isn’t. We deserve better. We deserve encouraging knowledge about our past and ourselves.
In the meantime, I will go back to my latest book “You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey” by two Black sisters, Amber and Lacey Ruffin, about some of the crazy things said to and done to Black people often in ignorance of how a Black person would perceive it.
