Martha Hickson thought nothing of complimenting a student on his good taste for selecting Jonathan Evison’s 2018 novel “Lawn Boy,” which had won an Alex Award from the American Library Association for being one of the year’s best young adult books. But she was curious how he picked it out since it was unusual for anyone to retreat into the fiction stacks and was told “My parents told me to look for it.” As it would turn out, this wasn’t a recommendation on their part, but a means to an end when the semi-autobiographical novel had courted some controversy in other parts of the country for having gay characters and after being placed on a banned list in Leander, Texas, it was a natural choice for a group of parents in New Jersey to attempt to portray the school’s librarian as some kind of smut peddler, using her endorsement after checking out the book as confirmation that she was corrupting the youth.
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, but the scandal put Hickson in the crosshairs of a culture war that librarians across the country have faced in recent years as far-right organizations such as Moms of Liberty have broadened their ground game to a national level and have sought to remove books from shelves that have any trace of LGTBQ or race-related content. It’s what led Kim A. Snyder to criss-cross the U.S. for her latest film “The Librarians,” which shows the challenges that these civil servants face as they are thrust into the spotlight in their communities, served up like a piñata at school board meetings where the loudest voices have a way of winning the debate. Besides Hickson, the film finds honorable staffers such as Suzette Baker of Llano County, Texas who refused to pull Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me” from the collection she presided over when it appeared on a list of books that state Rep. Matt Krause circulated as being marked for exclusion and Julie Miller of Clay County, Florida, the wife of a Baptist Minister whose practice of faith extends to the belief that students deserve a full education.
After Snyder devoted herself to making films about the gun violence that has plagued American schools with “Newtown” and “Us Kids,” the filmmaker tackles a far more abstract threat here as it looks like the librarians’ stand to protect books is really preventing the erasure of history as entire cultures would be swept under the rug if extremist groups have their way and a coordinated effort has become more and more difficult to combat when school board meetings largely fly under the radar themselves. “The Librarians” seeks to change that, after first making a splash last year at the Sundance Film Festival and now set to broadcast this evening on Independent Lens on PBS (and available online thereafter) and recently, Snyder and Hickson graciously took the time to talk about what’s at stake as book ban lists are making an unfortunate comeback, the vulnerability of a profession specifically suited to maintain quiet as part of their work and where they’re finding hope in the increasingly dire situation.
Kim, what got you interested in this?
Kim A. Snyder: Back in the fall of ’21, I became aware of something that became known as the Krause List, which was a list of 850 books put forth by a state representative in Texas, asking school librarians to review and remove these books from their library shelves. This list was very quickly understood to be targeting books that had LGBTQ+ subjects and books about race and authors of color in very vague legislative language that was starting to also appear in the state of Texas, in Florida, and elsewhere, “about books that might shame or embarrass or make kids feel discomfort.” So there was a large swath of books, some of which were classics that have been banned at other times in the past, some of which were new books, and some of that were just complete shockers. But it was a large list and I became aware of this group of librarians that were starting to fight back and organize, and therein began a four-year journey to tell the story across a national story that landed me in a number of states, including with Martha in New Jersey.
Martha, as it’s made clear in the film, librarians generally like to stay out of the spotlight. Was it much of a decision to participate in something like this?
Martha Hickson: It sure is. The first decision I had to face was shortly after this happened to me in September of 2021 [when I was] one of the first librarians in the country to be targeted in this historic way. The School Library Journal, the professional publication for our occupation, asked me to write an article about what it was like to be at the center of a book banning effort and I really had to think long and hard about it because I did not want to be the poster child for this. It was a very uncomfortable thing. But I decided if I could share with other librarians what I went through and how I dealt with it, I would be doing a public service for others in my profession. It is that article that led Kim to me indirectly through our mutual friend, Jonathan Friedman at PEN America. Once again, when the request came to appear in a documentary, I had to think, “Oh gosh, do I really want to do this? But once I talked to Kim and saw her outstanding body of work and the caliber of work that she did, there was no question that I would participate.
Kim, it was interesting to think about this film in the context of your previous work when you’re constantly thinking about the next generation, but your films “Newtown” takes the perspective of the parents and “Us Kids” was from the point of view of the students. Was it interesting to center civil servants?
Kim A. Snyder: It wasn’t a contrived construct. A lot of these things come to me by instinct and I just instinctually was drawn toward this story. But now in looking at the dots that connect, these are fundamentally things that affect young adults in a very fundamental infringement of human rights. I’ve covered gun violence extensively, being the number one killer of 19-and-under-year-olds in the country and the idea now that it is the same age group that is largely their rights are just being trampled — that they have to go to school and don’t really have a choice of being afraid of being shot in their own school and they also are going to school and being told that they don’t have access to the books they should have, there’s a throughline for sure.
And parallel to the gun issue, [I was] really becoming an activist around it and more outraged and more in solidarity with, not just my librarian friends that I’ve come to really love, but those who flank them and to really see this as a potential for an important symbol in the country, not only of what the larger context of what this means, since you can point to just so many examples in history about this being out of a playbook of authoritarian movements, but joining forces to fight the good fight. [I was] more inspired to give voice to this and let the country know how important this [fight] is while recognizing that we’re facing so many things that are head spinning. But this is definitely an important head spinning moment of what’s happening in terms of the attack on our access to information and what it means in the big picture.
Martha, I know you’ve been traveling with the film in recent months and meeting with other librarians. What’s it been like to connect with others?
Martha Hickson: It’s been incredible. When I first said yes to do this, I thought it might be just like any of the other dozens and dozens of interviews I’ve done since 2021, where I’d have a nice conversation with somebody and that would be it. But this has been my life since I connected with Kim and for the last year, I have been traveling literally around the world, meeting with audiences around this film, and it has been so gratifying.
For a long time I felt I was being gaslighted by my employers, by my community. Oh, this isn’t a big deal. What are you so upset about? But we have Q & A sessions after each screening, and to sit there on the stage and look into the faces of audience members and see that they are stunned by what they’ve seen, I realize now it was a quite upsetting thing as audiences are letting me know. After audiences see this film, they are educated, they are aggravated, and they are activated and one of the most profound experience I had over the last year was traveling with Kim in November to Berlin to screen the film for German librarians and this will tell you what a moment we’re in. The librarians in Germany, haunted by their own history, looked at this film and were terrified by what they saw.
Kim A. Snyder: People tend to be shocked in some ways by understanding what I was shocked by day one, which was [to consider] are we really living in a country where the criminalization of our librarians for standing up for our constitutional rights is on the table. But I also have been just so inspired to feel that we have a means through storytelling to, as Martha said, activate people and to understand that getting involved locally means a lot. This is an issue where you can have agency and where you can actually affect what in many cases what censorship might look like try to speak out or ingratiate yourself to your local librarian and not have it so that they are find themselves isolated and alone as Martha did in the beginning.
On the lighter side, I won’t single out the airline, but I’ve been on the road to 80 places, by my count. We’re just astounded at the demand for this film and we’re so excited to be bringing it to national audiences by way of PBS. That was our ultimate goal and appropriate that this should be in public media. it’s been amazing to try to educate and we see change in the room every time we see this and I know that’s going to happen in households throughout the country on Monday of people saying, “What can I do?” And they can go and they can vote in school board elections. We’ve learned that the average turnout [for them] is maybe 6%, but these [bodies] — library boards and city councils — really matter and learning how censorship can take hold in your very community and doing things to thwart it preemptively is what excites me about our opportunity. And I get up in the morning and I say, if Martha can do it, I can do it. I don’t say this lightly, but these are American patriots on the front lines taking great risks to fight to preserve our democracy.
“The Librarians” airs on February 9th as part of PBS’ Independent Lens and will be available to stream thereafter on the PBS app.