Rows of book at Mahon Public Library. Photo by Reece Nations.
By Akshita Srivastava
The national conversation on book bans in public schools has landed in Lubbock, prompting local advocates to consider its implications for the future.
Since the passage of Texas Senate House Bill 900 in June 2023, Lubbock has begun to see book vendors forced to accommodate removal requests and rate books based on content. Lubbock community members Joshua Salmans, a Texas Tech University librarian, and Peter Muhlberger, co-founder of Lubbock Freedom to Read Coalition, agree that the growing support for book bans has less to do with protecting children from potentially harmful material and more about control.
When asked about the freedom to read coalition, Muhlberger said his group wants to ensure Lubbock’s children have access to all types of books. The group also wants to protect culturally important books from being removed and prevent “[p]eople wanting to turn back social progress to fantasy 1950s in which America was white, heterosexual, Christian, and patriarchal…”
Data collected by the American Library Association notes that the most commonly banned books contain “LGBTQIA+ content,” like Mike Curato’s “Flamer,” George M. Johnson’s “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” and Texas’s most challenged book in 2022, Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.”
New books in a libraries juvenile section. Photo by Reece Nations.
Other common themes depicted in material being challenged involve dysfunctional families and relationships and non-white characters.
Proponents of book bans, such as groups like Moms for Liberty, have a different notion of what they are trying to accomplish. According to the local chapter’s website, they are committed to ensuring the country’s “survival” by “unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.”
While the notion that parents should play a role in their children’s education and safeguard them from harmful content isn’t questioned, it can be misconstructed in a negative way. Occasionally, this idea results in the perception that anyone introducing alternative perspectives to children is branded as a groomer, with librarians often finding themselves as the primary targets of such accusations.
While Salmans himself hasn’t faced these accusations due to his position in higher education, he mentioned that other local librarians have engaged in discussions about the concept of grooming with a book-banning group.
Salmans said their definition of the term was, “any interference with my child that’s with a worldview that’s not my own.”
About Reece Nations
