At Children's Institute 2024 last week in New Orleans, La., four booksellers convened to discuss the intersection of advocacy, activism, and bookselling. The panel featured Rebecca Crosswhite, co-owner of Rediscovered Books in Boise, Idaho, John Cavalier, co-owner of Cavalier House Books in Denham Springs, La., and Vera Warren Williams, founder and director of Community Book Center in New Orleans, La. Brein Lopez, general manager of Children's Book World in Los Angeles, Calif., moderated the talk.
Williams, who founded her store in 1983, said that narratives centering Black people and experiences have "always been under assault," and currently there is a concentrated effort going on to "rewrite us out of history." In New Orleans specifically, it has not reached the point of official book bans, and Williams said that if it does, the bookstore will challenge them. A major problem, however, is that many schools in the area don't have libraries. Rather, they have media rooms, and Community Book Center works with various nonprofits to help make sure that schoolchildren still have access to the services and functions that libraries provide.
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| Left to right: Rebecca Crosswhite, John Cavalier, Vera Warren Williams, Brein Lopez | |
Williams said that the store partners with many nonprofit organizations to help support different facets of the community. Through a partnership with Everything We Touch We Grow, Community Book Center helps make diverse children's books available to young mothers in places like neonatal clinics, and the store works with a drug rehabilitation center to provide books to people with substance abuse issues so that they have gifts to give their families. Williams and her team do similar things to support incarcerated people and their families, and they make books available at places like homeless shelters and battered women's shelters. In turn, Williams emphasized that she and her team are able to do what they do because of community members "stepping up" and giving the bookstore support.
Giving some context for the area of Louisiana in which Denham Springs resides, Cavalier mentioned the state's "infamous" 1991 gubernatorial election in which David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, ran as a Republican and received some 30% of the vote. Livingston Parish, where Cavalier House Books is located, was Duke's "second biggest stronghold" in that election; calling it a conservative community, Cavalier said, is an "understatement." The bookstore makes sure it is an "open, safe space" for all in the community and not just the "loud majority" in Denham Springs.
Cavalier takes an active role in school board and library board meetings to help shape the conversation, and he said one of the projects he's most proud of in-store is "Coffee with the Candidates." The event provides anyone running for public office in Livingston Parish a chance to speak at the store for 30 minutes. The local newspaper attends, and while some bad ideas certainly are aired, it provides a forum for challenging and redirecting those ideas. The event, he added, is "very replicable."
And when an audience member brought up a persistent problem at their store with people coming in and covering up titles that feature diverse characters or pride flags on their covers, Cavalier suggested making those displays even bigger and moving them to the front of the store.
Crosswhite noted that in Idaho, there are currently "lots of things to be mad about right now," and the team at Rediscovered Books decided they had to "pick a lane." They chose book banning, and for the past few years they've been working with local libraries, raising public awareness, and trying to stop the government from "taking our books away."
One of the first things the team noticed, Crosswhite recalled, was how "sneaky" the book-banning efforts were. There was lots of "juggling schedules" and things going on without public awareness or input, but Crosswhite and the team managed to show up at every meeting where bills were put in front of committees and packed hearings with concerned community members. It was a "really heartwarming thing," she said, and when the bill went to Governor Brad Little's desk the first time, he didn't sign it.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of it. Legislators "pushed it through" on the last day of the session, and this time it was signed into law. The law, which goes into effect next month, will allow anyone, whether they are Idaho residents or not, to challenge a book in the state, and librarians will have to move it to an 18+ section of their library or pay a $250 fine. This is forcing some libraries that are too small to maintain separate 18+ sections to become 18+ entirely, Crosswhite pointed out. Going forward, Crosswhite and her team will continue working with community members, local libraries, the ACLU, and the ALA to challenge this law.
Lopez called himself a big advocate for the idea that curation itself is advocacy. Promoting and prominently displaying banned and challenged titles is extremely important in and of itself, Lopez said, considering the reasons why these books are being targeted. He also suggested booksellers provide a space for young people to express their thoughts about these and other issues. To that end, his store has done poetry slams for children ages 7 to 14 that have been very successful, with as many as 35 kids attending.
Children's Book World works with many organizations around Los Angeles to provide children with books. Partners include Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Edelman Children's Court, and every neonatal clinic the store can find. The store also has a nonprofit wing, and its mission is to get books into the hands of students at Title 1 schools. Every book the store sells, he noted, goes to doing that work. --Alex Mutter