Alabama just defunded my library
Please help me and others fight efforts by ultraconservatives to hurt the library where I get books I review here
On Thursday, Alabama made national headlines when it took the alarming step of stripping the Fairhope Public Library of $42,000 in state funding.
The reason? The FPL had refused to bow to ultraconservatives who demanded that it remove certain books from the teen section. They include Patricia McCormick’s novel Sold, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, which centers on the plight of a 13-year-old Nepali girl sold into sexual slavery.
The FPL is my library, and many of the books I review come from it. I’d like to fight back against its defunding by reviewing Sold here, and I can do it with one new paid annual subscriber. As a working critic, I get free advance reader’s copies of some forthcoming books from NetGalley, but Sold is too old to be available from it. My income from paid subscribers typically goes to buy books I write about but can’t get from the library or NetGalley.
The defunding by the Alabama Public Library Service trustees blindsided the FPL, which says it had no chance to respond.
Fairhope is the first town to lose its financial support under a new Alabama law and 2024 administrative code changes, which say that to receive state money, libraries must protect young people from “sexually explicit or other materials deemed inappropriate for children or youth.” The financial hit is part of nationwide effort by well-organized right-wing organizations to rob libraries of their power to choose the books they see as right for their readers.
An assault on ‘one of the jewels’ among state libraries
The move by the APLS followed efforts by two groups, Clean Up Alabama and Moms for Liberty, to control what libraries in the state make available to their users.
Fairhope apparently was targeted because, a few years ago, the FPL received complaints from parents and others about 35 books on its shelves for young people. The library reviewed the books, reaffirmed that they were appropriate for their age group, and declined to remove them.
Last week an APLS trustee suggested one of the reasons why this is so disturbing:
“The Fairhope library is one of the jewels of the state library system, one of the best funded in the state library system, in one of the most conservative parts of Alabama.”
Read Freely Alabama, an organization that has opposed restrictions on library materials, suggested that the move may have come in response to the pressures from ultraconservatives. Amber Frey of Read Freely said:
“I think that the GOP chair on the State Library Board is forcing the removal of books just because of anti-library extremists. I think that’s ignoring the voices of Fairhope taxpayers and library users.”
It’s certainly ignoring my voice, which I’ve used multiple times to speak to groups at the library.
How you can help
If you’d like to help the library directly, rather than indirectly by supporting my reviews, you can:
Donate to the GoFundMe page for the Fairhope Public Library Foundation.
Contact the FPL to find out how else you can give to it.
Write a letter to the editor of al.com protesting the funding cuts it described in this article or to the Alabama Public Library Service, especially if you are a literary influencer whose voice might help to call attention to this latest blow to the freedom to read.
Thank you for reading and for anything you can do to support my library and others!
Update: After I posted this story, an overflow crowd attended a Fairhope City Council meeting that dealt with the funding cut, which al.com covered in this story.
Jan is an award-winning journalist and critic in Lower Alabama. She has edited the book section of a large newspaper and served as a vice president of the National Book Critics Circle.
Notes
https://www.nationalbook.org/books/sold/
https://apnews.com/article/library-content-battles-alabama-funding-571d58e060fbe0b25b2317a0bf99c467
Shocking. Alabama needs all the help it can get.
This is heartbreaking. I grew up in Baldwin County, and books like the ones being attacked were such important safe spaces for me and my friends. But also, I didn't even realize I was queer as a young person, and as an adult, I realized a large part of this is due to how much queerphobia I internalized growing up. I had very wonderful, loving parents, but they had no idea that I needed these books, and I had no way of knowing or telling them that I did. Books like this can help young people process and communicate about their experiences with marginalization. These books can even intervene with abuse, bullying, and self-harm. We need to increase access to these books, not decrease access to them. I sent my letter to APLS. Thank you so much for sharing this.