As part of EveryLibrary Live!, the extraordinary week of literary celebration and advocacy (September 22-27, 2024), EveryLibrary’s Executive Director John Chrastka talks with Rebekah Modrak and Nadine Kalin, the editors of Trouble in Censorville, and freedom-to-read advocates Willie Carver, Gavin Downing, and Julie Miller.
Their “Fight for the First” Panel will air at 12pm ET on Monday, September 23, 2024. It’s part of a series that includes over 25 panels featuring 45+ authors, publishing professionals, and experts on book bans, censorship, and the First Amendment.
Modrak, Kalin, Carver, Downing and Miller are editors or contributors to the new book “Trouble in Censorville: The Far Right’s Assault on Public Education – and the Teachers Who are Fighting Back,” which documents the right-wing ideological opposition to diversity and changing social mores that has resulted in book bans and the passing of an unprecedented number of laws that invoke the “divisive concept” premise to legitimate discrimination. Since 2020, legislation has prohibited K-12 instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation and has led to the shuttering of libraries in schools. In Trouble in Censorville, 14 public school teachers bring readers face-to-face with first-hand accounts of what it means to be living and working under these realities and how to resist attacks on the freedom to read and to think critically.
On Tuesday, October 1, 2024 (6:30pm), Literati Bookstore will host an in-person, open-to-the-public event featuring the recently published book Trouble in Censorville: The Far Right’s Assault on Public Education – and the Teachers Who Are Fighting Back. Edited by Rebekah Modrak and University of North Texas professor Nadine M. Kalin, the book features 14 testimonials by public school teachers who describe being fired, harassed, or smeared for teaching historical truth and racial justice and for offering books by and about LGBTQ+ people.
Their stories bring readers face-to-face with the human cost of these attacks, which range from social isolation to pent-up anger over institutional betrayal to the terrible toll on teachers’ mental and physical health. Educators predict the future of a generation of students who are told to walk out of the room in the face of discomfort and no longer have access to books or critical thinking about American society. Their stories of frontline resistance provide a battle plan for confronting censorship, rallying support, and mobilizing a grassroots defense of public schools.
The Literati event will feature readings by Modrak and local educators — Sarah Anton, a secondary English teacher, and Jeff Gaynor, an Ann Arbor School Board member — and a Q&A period with the audience.
For the first time, K-12 educators who have been threatened, ostracized, smeared as “pedophiles” and “Marxists,” placed on leave, and fired for teaching the historical truth of the struggle for racial justice, or for offering books by and about LGBTQ+ people tell their harrowing, powerfully personal stories. In Trouble in Censorville, 14 public school teachers bring readers face-to-face with first-hand accounts of what it means to be living and working under these realities.
Educators predict the future of a generation of students who are told to walk out of the room in the face of discomfort and who no longer have access to books or critical thinking about American society. They describe the social isolation of being the only teacher in their school to fight back against far-right agitators and extremist trolls. They talk, with unvarnished honesty, of their pent-up anger over institutional betrayal, and of the terrible toll the radical right’s culture war on public education has taken on their mental and physical health, from panic attacks to insomnia to high blood pressure.
And yet, these teachers are fighting back. They’re mobilizing colleagues, parents, and community members who share their faith in the freedom to read, the freedom to think critically, the freedom to challenge small-minded provincialism. Their stories of frontline resistance, collected here, provide a battle plan for confronting censorship, rallying support, and mobilizing a grassroots defense of public schools.
Terrifying, infuriating, and inspiring, Trouble in Censorville sounds the alarm for a democracy on fire.
Praise for Trouble in Censorville:
Trouble in Censorvilleis an urgent bulletin from the teachers and librarians on the front lines of the war against reason that is sweeping our country. Their powerful testimony is enraging – these vicious attacks are not what they signed up for. But it’s also profoundly uplifting, a vision of courage, resistance, and grace under fire that is a model for us all in these dark times. —Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home
An essential record of the often-invisible war on educators. Moving and inspiring, these stories are a reminder that teachers and librarians are on the front lines of the resistance against authoritarianism. —Annalee Newitz, author of Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind
An urgent and compelling battle cry against the insidious rise of censorship. Everyone who believes in freedom of expression should examine this text.—Juno Dawson, Author of This Book is Gay
This is easily one of the best, most important books I’ve read this year. Here, educators control their own stories and share the impact from start to finish, both on their careers and themselves, with no chance for the media to distort or deceive. —Sarah Mueller, Teacher and Book Blogger
