Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Happy Friday, everybody. We had a great week of conversations here on the show. Baker Paul Hollywood came in to talk about his new cookbook. We talked about the rising divorce rates in people over the age of 50. We heard live music from vibraphonist Joel Ross. You can check him out at the Hudson Jazz Festival this weekend. Author Kiran Desai was here in studio yesterday to talk about her amazing new novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. If you missed any of those conversations, you can go back and listen to them wherever you get your podcasts, or just go to wnyc.org and click on the All Of It show page.

By the way, we have transcripts of each conversation that there, too. Follow us on Instagram, @allofitwnyc, to see some behind-the-scenes action here at the WNYC Studios. Now, let's get this hour started with a documentary called The Librarians.

[music]

Alison Stewart: Fahrenheit 451, Beloved, Flamer, Hair Love. These are books that have been banned in some parts of the country. Next week is Banned Books Week, which was founded in 1982 to bring awareness to efforts to censor certain books. It is more necessary than ever. Recently, there have been organized and focused movements to ban large groups of books from a particular place: the school library. That has been aided by partisan groups running candidates for the school board who are funded by political action committees.

A new documentary in theaters today spotlights the effects of these campaigns by telling the stories of librarians whose lives have been turned upside down. Let's take a listen to part of the trailer. This is The Librarians.

Speaker 2: We have a movement within America that has decided that school boards are now where they want to push their agenda.

Speaker 3: This stuff is coming into your schools, and it's probably already there.

Speaker 4: Part of the ethics of our profession is to support the First Amendment and fight censorship.

Speaker 5: I've had former students reach out to me that have told me books that saved them. I'm going to speak out about it.

Speaker 6: This is not a communist nation. You do not get to pick our reading material. It is ours.

Speaker 7: You're trying to arrest librarians.

Speaker 8: No, I do not understand. The library--

Speaker 7: You're a fascist. You're a fascist.

Speaker 9: I cannot imagine my face on the wanted poster and my friends being taken away in handcuffs.

Speaker 10: You're coming for teachers and librarians, and they know it.

Speaker 11: This is a spiritual war.

Speaker 12: Our goal is to spread this to other communities.

Speaker 9: This is about taking away rights.

Speaker 13: I'm here today to implore you to listen to librarians.

Speaker 14: What is going on?

Alison Stewart: Some of the most aggressive efforts to remove books from shelves have been in red states like Texas and Florida. The effort is national, including here in New York and New Jersey. The film is playing at Film Forum. Joining us today is the director of The Librarians, Oscar-nominated and Peabody Award-winning director, Kim Snyder. Hi, Kim.

Kim Snyder: Hi.

Alison Stewart: Martha Hickson, who is featured in the film. She's a librarian in New Jersey who became a target for refusing to remove books from her library. Welcome to the show.

Martha Hickson: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: That was my just two cents. Listeners, especially librarians or educators, how have there been attempts to ban books in your district? How has you or your community responded? Are you participating in Banned Books Week? Let us know. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Kim, how did you find the librarians that you featured in your film?

Kim Snyder: It started back in the fall of '21 when I became aware of the Krause list, a state senator in Texas, who put together a list of 850 books that school districts should scour their shelves and recommending to take them off. I quickly became aware of a small group of librarians calling themselves the Freedom Fighters who were speaking out about this and organizing and learning from all kinds of librarians, not just in Texas but throughout the nation, about attacks. That was completely new to me. The book-banning part of it we've been hearing about, but this very organized siege attack on our librarians was shocking to me. That was three and a half, four years ago.

Alison Stewart: You focus mostly on Texas and Florida. What's unique about those states in terms of their efforts to remove books from shelves?

Kim Snyder: I think in talking to a partner that we're working on the impact of PEN America, we were talking this morning about the fact that a lot of this did get catalyzed at that time in Texas because that list, and I would argue a lot of this happened coming out of the pandemic when vaccines and masking became so politicized and groups like Moms for Liberty started to divert attention to the books and the culture wars.

At that time in Texas, before that, around the same time, was the Virginia governor's race with Glenn Youngkin. That race, all of those ads ran around basically the book Beloved. That, I think, was something like, "That's working." That became something that took root out of that in Texas. Then, as Martha, sitting here, aptly puts together in the film, this organized effort that began to. We knew that a lot of things were happening in Texas, coming from that unprecedented wave that started, and it was different than in the past. Then we started to realize this was national and follow, and eventually got to New Jersey with Martha.

Alison Stewart: One more question. I told Martha she's really cool. I said I'm going to ask you three questions, and I'm going to get to her. You mentioned the Krause list. Would you please explain the Krause list for our listeners?

Kim Snyder: Sure. It was a list of 850 books that this state representative put forth, and then the governor doubled down and said, "We have to look at pornography in the shelves." He used that word. It was the first time, I think, that there was this idea that librarians could be criminalized for what they chose to put on their shelves and doing their jobs. The Krause list, very quickly, a lot of the librarians that I came to know right away saw that these were really targeting LGBTQ issues of race, race history, and sexuality.

Alison Stewart: Martha?

Martha Hickson: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Why did you become a librarian?

Martha Hickson: Ah, I had a corporate career, very lucrative, comparatively low stress, but I didn't find it particularly rewarding. I'd always had this idea in the back of my head that I would like to teach. The short answer is, after the events of September 11th, I really took stock of my life and inventory and decided I was going to pivot in a more fulfilling direction. I am someone who has been enriched, my life through, by books. It's not something that you age out of in terms of your appreciation or your ability to hold them, read them, use them. I wanted to give other students that same gift.

Alison Stewart: What was important to you about being a librarian before this happened?

Martha Hickson: Before this happened, what was important to me was this focus on literature, literacy, and also, especially in these times, the ability to gather, use, determine high-quality, credible information. Bonus. I was a high school librarian, so I got to do that with teenagers. A lot of people say, "High school? Who could stand to be in a high school?" They're fantastic. I never had a job where I laughed so much every day.

Alison Stewart: Have you ever been in a situation where a parent has asked you about a book? A very honest and a very true question about why is this book present in our library? What happens when that normally occurs? Not in this circumstance, but normally a parent comes in and says, "Hey, I have a question about this book."

Martha Hickson: Right. Prior to 2021, certainly, that had happened a handful of times in my 20-year career as a high school librarian. Before 2021, that always started with this ye old-fashioned thing called a conversation that's lacking in the current environment. One parent would contact me, or perhaps an English teacher or the principal, to express a concern about the use of that book with their child.

The great thing about a conversation is that that parent can then explain their concerns. Then I, and/or the English teacher, or the principal can, then, talk about, "Here's the value of this book. Here's why it's in the library, what it contributes to the collection overall. If that's not persuasive to you, that's perfectly fine. I have 20,000 books in that library. Together, we can find another option for your student." In those handful of cases prior to 2021, I would say there were maybe five or six cases max. In every single case, a compatible resolution was achieved. No books were banned.

Alison Stewart: Kim, what seems to be the difference?

Kim Snyder: What we began to see, taking off from what Martha just said, is at that time, it became explosive and exponential the amount of challenges. Not just the amount of challenges, the fact that this longstanding protocol was being brazenly broken and unconstitutional, and, and, and. A lot of it was happening in state levels under the guise of state penal code. You started to hear the use of the word pornography. Suddenly, the librarians themselves were being called groomers, and horrifically, in the case of Martha, pedophiles.

It's hard to believe, but that's what started to happen then was this breaking of protocol, no due process for the manner in which these books were just summarily removed in hundreds. That is still happening. That's what really changed was the scope. We always say, and Martha can chime in on this, that parental rights had always been in place, the way she just described. That was never in question. There were always parental rights. This was this complete breaking of policy around these more, I think, organized other kinds of agendas that we reveal in the film.

Alison Stewart: Martha, can you describe what your town is like?

Martha Hickson: Sure. I was working in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, which is in the northwest corner of the state. It is a relatively affluent county. If you're a person who divides the country into blue, red, and purple, it's a fairly red county. I was in a high school with approximately 1,500 students. Almost all of those students graduate to go on to college.

Alison Stewart: When did you realize that things weren't quite right?

Martha Hickson: September 28th, 2021.

Alison Stewart: She knows the exact date.

Martha Hickson: That my life was divided into before and after.

Alison Stewart: Really?

Martha Hickson: Yes. That day, my principal entered my office during lunch. In fact, I was sitting there eating a sandwich, reading The New York Times Book Review, as I did every week. The fact that he entered my office was a rarity in and of itself. He said that he had heard a rumor that there was going to be a complaint about a book at the board meeting that evening. Therein ensued a conversation about which book. I prepared him for how to handle that, what we do in the event of a book challenge. I believed that he had it handled.

I went home that night and said to my husband, "Gee, something weird happened at work today." Described what I just described to you. Instead of watching Jeopardy! that night, as we normally did, we fired up the board meeting to watch it via livestream. My life kind of crumbled at that point. A group of parents had gathered at the board meeting, and when it came time for public comments, one after another, they took to the podium to lambaste, not only the library, but the librarian, and called me by name, a pornographer, pedophile, and groomer of children.

Alison Stewart: I don't even really know what to say after that. What was your response?

Martha Hickson: [laughs] My immediate response in the moment was all the feels: absolutely racing heartbeat, sick to my stomach, difficulty breathing. Eventually, I did compose myself. In the moment, as this public comments period was still ongoing and these people were still calling my name, I had my cell phone out. I was texting my union representative. I was getting in touch with the American Library Association. I was doing the things I knew I needed to do to not only protect myself, but to protect the library and students' right to read.

Alison Stewart: Your corporate background came in healthy. [laughs] I'm sure, a little bit there, you were like, "I knew to call."

Martha Hickson: Yes. My corporate background comes in handy in terms of compiling and disseminating information. I had had a prior book challenge experience in 2019, when the superintendent in the school district demanded that I remove Alison Bechdel's Fun Home on his command, and I refused to do so. That led to a very protracted situation, and I thought that was the worst thing that I ever had ever happened in my career back in 2019. In hindsight, I'm now grateful that that had happened because that was a dry run. It taught me the steps that I was able to employ so quickly on September 28th, 2021.

Alison Stewart: What book were they talking about?

Martha Hickson: That night, they were talking about a very strange combination of books in my mind, Gender Queer and Lawn Boy. In the ensuing days, they added onto the pile, This Book Is Gay, All Boys Aren't Blue, and Just For Old Times' Sake, Fun Home again.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call. Alan is calling from Brooklyn on Line 1. Hi, Alan, thank you for making the time to call All Of It. You are on the air.

Alan: Thanks so much. I thought I would give a little perspective because my mom used to teach in the New York City system. Actually, she taught at Brooklyn Tech, and she shared with me and the rest of my family a story about Langston Hughes. I'm sure everyone knows who he was, and she felt it was important for her students to learn about him and his take on America.

My mom left, before she died, a series of letters in which she began after being told not to. She argued the value of this to her principal, and it went to the superintendent. Ultimately, they said, "You know what? Tough." They transferred it to a really difficult school. Later, she became a librarian in my hometown on Long Island. I know as a librarian, even though that was somewhat of a liberal area, she did have to argue to keep certain books. She was a children's librarian and an adult librarian.

There were lots of choices that she could make. I know because I was a younger person then, and I know she did that. Those letters that she wrote in the '40s, for me, were just an amazing statement about her, but I just thought people might want to know that this is not new, and you have to keep fighting for it because it won't continue unless you do.

Alison Stewart: Alan, thank you so much for sharing that story. I'd love to get your response to that, Kim.

Kim Snyder: I think, certainly, I've been really struck since I entered this new world of beloved librarians, that there is such an incredible integrity around commitment. As a storyteller, I had to think, "What are the stakes for them?" The stakes are upholding, I think, the most important tenets of democracy, of freedom of expression, freedom to read. They're also about protecting kids and knowing that these books do, in fact, save lives.

It's also the literature, as Martha said, an attachment to think about books like Beloved or Toni Morrison being taken off the shelf, or important history, Black history being erased. I know that Martha and so many of these people stand on the shoulders of so many people. I also hear that although it's happened in the past, this is an unprecedented wave that we've never seen quite like this.

Alison Stewart: Because there's danger involved in this wave-

Kim Snyder: Right.

Alison Stewart: -that we see in the film.

Kim Snyder: One obviously can't help but think about McCarthyism. I think right now, at the beginning of the film, when I started filming, they would say three and a half years ago, they were the canaries in the coal mine. Now sitting here, no spoiler, but toward the end when our librarian says, "Now this is everyone's story," I think now about what we're seeing in our museum, in our institutions of higher education, in our mass media, our late-night television. It is everyone's story to think about censorship and how un-American it fundamentally is.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking with director Kim Snyder and Martha Hickson about the film The Librarians. It's in theaters today. It spotlights the effort to ban books from school libraries and penalize librarians who fight back. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It.

[music]

Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guests are director Kim Snyder and Martha Hickson. We're talking about the film The Librarians. It's in theaters today. It spotlights the effort to ban books from school libraries and to penalize librarians who fight back. Kim, there seems to be a focus on school boards. Why is there such a focus on school boards?

Kim Snyder: It's interesting, when I started to traverse the country, I would say to my friends when I'd return here, "You really can't get a sense of the pulse of what's happening in the country until you go to a school board meeting somewhere in the heartland or somewhere." It could be right here in New York City, I suppose. We covered less of that. As we reveal in the film, school boards became battlegrounds.

One of the things we're encouraged about is, right now in rolling this out, starting right here in New York City tonight, how many art house cinemas are taking this on? I say that because I'm hopeful that there is a return to a yearning to be together as community around issue-based films like this that sometimes have a harder time getting out there and being in places because school boards have become weaponized. They're the last place where these constructive-- sadly, these constructive conversations, they're scripted, people are sent in, it's organized. They read the same thing over and over, and it's just divisive. There's no, as Martha said, real conversation that happens in that space.

We're experiencing something very different as we roll out with the film that does feel like there's a middle. So many Americans don't feel partisan about this, it turns out. That's my feeling about the school boards. We hope that people get engaged in voting for school boards. Someone told me that there's an average turnout of about 6% to school board elections that are coming up. Really important to show up at them because they determine so much of these issues around censorship and freedom to read.

Alison Stewart: We have a fan of yours on Line 1, someone named Alison calling in. Hi, Allison. Thank you for calling All Of It.

Allison: Hi, Alison. Hi, Martha. I'm a former school librarian from New Jersey. Martha, I have followed your ordeal. I'm a huge fan of yours. As for all of the school librarian community in New Jersey, I'm sure you know that we all have your back.

Martha Hickson: Thank you.

Allison: Your community is behind you. We've followed you, and we support you. I'm a former school librarian because I made a career change a few years back, not unrelated to what we've been going through over these last few years. My career change was somewhat related to this culture war that we found ourselves fighting. Before I made that career change, I was lucky enough to be working in an independent school that allowed me to develop a course called Do Not Read, where I built a curriculum around reading banned books or formerly banned books, or often frequently banned books.

The students were reading frequently banned books. We read Judy Blume. We read Sherman Alexie. We read Fahrenheit 451. Something that we talked about frequently was the dividing lines of obscenity and profanity, and how much of that is actually just carried on in the news, like in our everyday world, like what these laws and what people were trying to protect children from, or--

Alison Stewart: It's an interesting point you bring up, Martha, and I wanted to get your response to that. We were talking about this earlier, a bunch of people on the staff was. Going through the children is really, really difficult for people because everybody wants to protect their children. If you put the children first, even as a front for what you're doing, it makes it really, really tough to fight.

Martha Hickson: It does, especially when children are being used as the frame to manipulate the perception of what's happening. Take, for example, a book like This Book Is Gay. You'll hear those who want it removed saying, "This should not be in a first-grade classroom." "I have wonderful news for you. It is not." They're taking books intended for young adults and high school students, positioning them as being distributed, distributed, handed off, promoted to kindergartners and first graders, and using that false frame to demonize librarians and the profession as a whole.

Alison Stewart: In watching the film, there's some pretty scary stuff that happens at a few of the meetings. Were you ever in fear for your life, Martha?

Martha Hickson: I was definitely in fear. I don't know if it has gone so far as to be in fear for my life. Things did get to a point where I installed security cameras on my home. There were strange vehicles idling for 30 minutes, 45 minutes at a time in front of my house. Doxing went on. In fact, it continues. I retired last November. The harassment on social media continues. The doxing continues, so much so that I've had to install those cameras on the home that I retired to.

Alison Stewart: I don't want to give too much away, Kim, but when I saw this and I was about halfway through, I said, "Follow the money. You got to follow the money on this story." I don't want you to give too much away, but would you explain who Patriot Mobile is?

Kim Snyder: To my knowledge, they are a mobile cell phone company in Texas that has a pack, and a certain percentage of all the revenues that come to them go to basically back certain school boards and put a lot of money behind flipping particular school boards. Again, not giving away too much, but we do have clips of certain notable people saying that school boards are the key that picks the lock.

What starts to become apparent through a very interesting character that changes her mind about the whole thing and realizes, as Martha says, that there is no there there, that this is fake news, there is no pornography in the first and second grade shelves. That is where you start to see a different agenda that is white Christian nationalist-based, that is anti-public schools. That character says, "I didn't sign up for that," and realize that she's been manipulated by some of these organized forces.

Alison Stewart: This text says, "Listening to the show as a 2012 graduate of the high school in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, I hate to hear about the experience your guest Martha had. I'm so grateful to the high school teachers I had, exposing me to different books, authors, and voices that shaped my perspectives on the world. Librarians and teachers are crucial in helping young people think critically about their world and to think for themselves."

Martha Hickson: Agreed.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Martha Hickson: Hunterdon County graduate, agreed.

Alison Stewart: You decided to go on camera. Other librarians chose not to be on camera. Some did, some didn't. What went into your decision to be on camera?

Martha Hickson: That was a difficult decision, and it started in 2022 when School Library Journal asked me to write an article about my experience being the target of a censorship effort. At first, I was going to decline that opportunity because I said to myself, "I do not want to be the poster child for censorship." Thankfully, I'm not. That's Amanda Jones. [laughs] However, I decided to write the article for School Library Journal because I was one of the earliest attacked in this way. I thought, if sharing my experiences could help other librarians navigate these very difficult waters, then it would be worth it.

Then all of this just ensued from that article. Many media opportunities. Then ultimately, that's how I met Kim, was through that article. Again, for the same reason. I want other librarians to know they're not alone. Now, through this magnificent film, I want the world at large to know what is happening when those outside of the library community have seen the film. I've been to probably a dozen screenings now. People are shocked.

The community, in general, has heard about book banning. Most probably haven't been to a board meeting. When they see the behavior that is taking place at these board meetings, the abuse that is heaped on individual librarians, people are absolutely shocked. I'm grateful, so grateful to Kim and her team for the care that they have taken in compiling these stories into a very, very compelling narrative.

Alison Stewart: Kim, do you have any sense what the endgame is for the backers of this movement?

Kim Snyder: Which movement? [laughs]

Alison Stewart: The anti-librarian movement. The anti-books movement.

Kim Snyder: I think it's really akin to 2025 agenda. I think it's the foundations of it are racism and fear of changing demographics, and wanting to erase history, so many things that we hear about. I think, in essence, the endgame is to rewrite history.

Alison Stewart: Martha, somebody in our staff has a kid who's in school to be a librarian. She's getting her library science degree. Any advice?

Martha Hickson: [laughs] Stick with it. Regardless of what kind of librarian they're going to become, it's essential that you know your library's policies for both selection and challenges and removal. That's something, especially in a school environment, the librarian is probably the only person who will know those policies, what should and should not be done, and that would be a key, key piece of information.

Alison Stewart: The name of the film is The Librarians. I've been speaking with its director, Kim Snyder, as well as former librarian, librarian at heart, Martha Hickson. Thank you so much for coming to the studio.

Kim Snyder: Thanks so much, Alison.

Martha Hickson: Thank you.