Book review | “That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Bans in America” by Amanda Jones

Amanda Jones was born and raised in the small, rural town of Watson in Livingston Parish in southern Louisiana, about 20 miles southeast of Baton Rouge. She still lives there with her husband and daughter in a house next door to her parents'. Watson is a place of regular rhythms and few surprises, with family, church and conservative tradition, where residents are very familiar with one another.

Jones worked as a librarian at the same public school she attended for more than two decades. She was appointed by the School Library Journal in 2021. She loved her job, her students and the place she held in her community. Her book, This librarianis the story of how her life was turned upside down when she came into conflict with a local group called Citizens for a New Louisiana. What sounds harmless is actually part of a far-right, nationwide ecosystem that targets people, books and institutions it deems too liberal, permissive and inclusive.

In other words: too awake.

Fearing threats to the Livingston Public Library system, Jones stood up at a July 19, 2022, meeting of the library's Board of Oversight and expressed concern that books by LGBTQIA authors or about reproductive health could be removed. “Once you start misplacing and banning a subject, it becomes a slippery slope, and where does it end?” Although nothing in her remarks that night was inflammatory or more radical than the American Library Association's standard guidelines, Jones quickly became the target of a fierce and vicious social media campaign. Jones was accused of grooming and pedophilia, of encouraging children to engage in anal sex, and was attacked by people she had known and considered friends for years, by parents of children she had taught, by people she encountered at the grocery store or the dry cleaners.

That the accusations were false didn't matter. Amanda's long-standing public service, her close ties to the community, and her Christian affiliation offered her no protection. Like the hysterical witch trials of an earlier century, the idea that Amanda Jones was a purveyor of filth took on a life and momentum of its own. She was impure, bright, a danger to precious and impressionable children. Social media carried the story far beyond Livingston Parish.

What happens when an ordinary person suddenly becomes the target of public controversy? What emotional toll does it take? Jones suffered such anxiety, depression, and fear that she had to take leave from the job she loved. Her family suffered. She received death threats. If Jones had retreated from the public eye and gone into hiding, that would have been understandable, but she chose to defend her reputation, stand up for the principles she believed in, and confront her accusers. While her critics chose the easy path, Jones chose the harder, better path, and in the process discovered the fortitude it takes to do the right thing in the face of organized, well-funded, and ruthless opposition.

In addition to filing a libel suit, Jones was busy organizing other librarians across the country, building networks, agitating, and defending books and the value of information, free inquiry, and libraries as essential institutions that provide a range of important services, particularly in small communities. This librarian is a resolute defense of the freedom to read, discover and think.

“We should ALL want the freedom to read what we want,” Jones writes, “and have access to reading materials from diverse perspectives. That's exactly what we do by protecting our libraries. The attack on librarians and libraries is disgraceful and something everyone should fear.”

This review originally appeared in California Book Review.