Banned together for censorship talk

A challenging topic is on tap for the next meeting of the Willamette Writers Coast Chapter. on Saturday, March 18, Newport Public Library Director Laura Kimberly will lead an interactive presentation on book challenges and banning efforts across the country.

Many books are still being challenged and banned. A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials based upon the objections of a person or group, while a banning is the full removal of those materials.

Kimberly said efforts to censor state and local boards of education, libraries and librarians and the minds of the citizenry have an ominous impact on individual freedoms and our right to be educated, to know and to make our own decisions. She added that library staff in every state are facing an unprecedented number of attempts to ban books.

The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 729 challenges to library, school and university materials and services in 2021, resulting in more than 1,597 individual book challenges or removals.

Many current targeted books, like Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” are by or about Black or LGBTQ+ people.

However, George Orwell’s “1984,” Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and recently in the state of Kansas, E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web,” are among the thousands of books banned somewhere in this country.

Kimberly earned a MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2013. She is a member of the American Library Association, the Oregon Library Association and Mountain Plains Library Association. In her spare time, she enjoys running, reading, volunteering and spending time with her husband and children.

Saturday’s presentation begins at 2 pm in the McEntee Meeting Room of Newport Public Library, located at 35 NW Nye Street. For more information, go to willamettewriters.org.