Read Obama’s Powerful Letter Defending Challenged Books and Free Speech

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Librarians have always been heroes in our book. However, these literary leaders have been forced to display a whole new level of bravery in recent years, as the movement to censor library material has grown increasingly hostile. Many librarians claim that they have been harassed, doxxed, and even had their lives threatened for defending challenged books. In 2023 alone, dozens of libraries have reported bomb threats.

In honor of Banned Books Week, we are revisiting former president Obama’s powerful open letter to the “dedicated and hardworking librarians of America” amid censorship attacks. In the letter, posted to X (formerly Twitter) in July, he describes how books have shaped his personal identity as well as the identity of the nation. “In America, the First Amendment of our Constitution states that freedom begins with our capacity to share and access ideas—even, and maybe especially, the ones we disagree with,” the letter reads. “More often than not, someone decides to write those ideas down in a book.”

“Today,” the letter continues, “some of the books that shaped my life—and the lives of so many others—are being challenged by people who disagree with certain ideas or perspectives.” Librarians, Obama contends, are on the “front lines” of the battle over literary censorship.

The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom documented some 1,269 calls to censor library books and resources in 2022—the highest number the organization has ever reported over its more than 20 years of data collection and nearly twice as many attempted bans as the year before.

As Obama notes in his letter, these censorship attempts target books that “are often written by or feature people of color, indigenous people, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.” Indeed, for two years running, Gender Queer, a graphic memoir by Maia Kobabe that chronicles the author’s own adolescent exploration of gender and sexuality, has been the most banned book in the United States. According to PEN America, 40 percent of banned titles from July 2021 to June 2022 had protagonists or prominent secondary characters of color, and 21 percent of banned titles directly related to issues of race and racism.

But Obama is careful to note that this issue can affect people across the world and the political spectrum. “There have also been unfortunate instances in which books by conservative authors or books containing ‘triggering’ words or scenes have been targets for removal,” he points out, and American censorship risks setting off a global domino effect. If this nation “built on freedom of expression” silences certain voices, “why should other countries go out of their way to protect them?”

Obama ends the letter by thanking librarians for the “vital—and uniquely American—role [they] play in the life of our nation” and by urging “every citizen reading this” to remind “anyone who will listen—and even some people you think might not” of the importance of free and open dialogue to American democracy.

Obama also made cameos in promotional TikTok videos posted by the Harris County Library in Texas and the Kankakee Public Library in Illinois—the latter of which included the hashtags #FreedomToRead and #LetFreedomRead in its caption.

You can read the full letter in the tweet below and join Obama in the Unite Against Book Bans campaign led by the American Library Association at http://uniteagainstbookbans.org.

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