Authors Defending The Freedom To Read

My colleague Doug Murano, fellow HWA member, author, award winning anthologist and publisher, reached out to me the other day to let me know he was going to speak at his local school board meeting because they have an organized group of book banners.

Here is a link to his speech as recorded at the meeting via X, but since not everyone will be able to watch it, I asked him for his text as well. I have included that at the end of this post. 

But before I send you off to read his remarks, I want to make it clear that this took guts. To put himself on the line as an author, publisher, and local business owner, to out himself as an ally for the freedom to read in a room full of people there to ban books and limit freedom, in a state that grossly ignores is citizens' rights, that is brave. He risked a lot, but he did it because he knew it was the right thing to do. What he HAD to do. Doug is that kind of person.

However, here's the thing. A lot of you think you are that kind of person, but you are not going out to schools and libraries in your area and speaking out as book professionals. Why? I want you to think about that. You live in th town where you work at he public library, go speak at the school. Find a school or library in your region who needs support. 

Also, Tuesday, I had this post about my program for Sisters In Crime, about how authors can work in partnership with their libraries. Another way you can work with authors, it to get them to go speak out as well. They are extremely invested in the freedom to read. Get them to speak out as well. You can use Doug's remark's and his video as a guide.

Finally, I was to thank Doug for doing this and encourage you all to support his company. Order some books for your library or a t-shirt for yourself. Click here for the Bad Hand Books website.

Here, with Doug's permission, is the text of his remarks. 

My name is Doug Murano. I’m a Bram Stoker Award-winning editor and owner of Bad Hand Books, a publishing company I operate here in the Brookings area. Our unofficial tagline is: Books they want to ban from people they want to outlaw. So when I heard that some individuals were organizing to try to get books banned in my community, it got my attention.

I’m here to help Brookings set some expectations as this body reviews and develops the relevant policies. I come before you on behalf of my four children—Rocco, Eva, Luca and Franny, who attend school in this district.

The book I brought with me changed my life. Some of you will recognize the title: IT, by Stephen King. I read it during summer days when I was about the same age as Bill and the Losers Club when they built their dam in the Barrens and later confronted Pennywise.

Had the adults in my life understood the content inside, they wouldn’t have wanted me to read this book. IT features scenes that depict the following: child abuse, dismemberment, racially motivated hate speech, a carnivorous circus clown, graphic spousal abuse, and a pre-teen sewer orgy. This list is not all-inclusive.

None of that sticks with me as much as the lesson of the book’s prologue. And that’s why I brought it. You see, the monster featured in IT, Pennywise, sleeps for 27 years at a time—and wakes up to sow hate and fear once a generation. It eats hate and fear. In the novel’s prologue, the cycle begins when a young gay man, Adrian Mellon, becomes the victim of a hate crime at the hands of the people of Derry—and as a result, becomes the victim of Pennywise.

Why do I mention this? It’s because our Uncle Steve tried to tell us more than 30 years ago that the evil that slumbers in good, small communities—little towns with names like Derry, Maine or Brookings, South Dakota—wakes up at some point in each generation and the first sign of it is often violence and hatred toward our most vulnerable, marginalized neighbors. It’s a relevant lesson.

Despite what a number of those who are in attendance may insist, efforts to ban books don’t protect our kids. In fact, they’re aimed at pushing marginalized individuals further out. To erase their stories, de-legitimize their struggles, make them easy to dehumanize. Physical violence comes easier after that.

I’ll repeat: When segments of our communities are emboldened to silence or harm marginalized individuals, there’s often something much more sinister lurking underneath, trying to find the right time to wake up. We’re seeing it now. It animates much of one modern political movement—including efforts to ban books in our schools.

We can put a stop to it—and help keep it at bay in the future by letting our kids read freely NOW so they can learn important lessons like the one I’ve shared tonight.

So I’m here to say, as an honorary member of the Losers Club in the midst of a generational confrontation: Not on my watch. Not in my community. My children deserve better. Every single child deserves better.

I urge this body to reject calls to ban books.

Hi-yo, Silver.