September 2024 Update

ID: “September Monthly Update www.freedomoklahoma.org/news” with our logo and a background collage including images from a 1961 ad for the Smut Mobile, an effort between Oklahoma City-based Citizens for Decent Literature and the Mothers for Decency organized a campaign where smut mobiles would drive members to various places they were demanding remove media they didn't approve of; an AP image of Hitler youth participating in a book burning; a stack of challenged titles in Oklahoma; an image of a woman picketing outside of an OKC Circle K with a sign “Porn Pollutes”; and a 1971 image that ran in 1971 in The Oklahoman with the caption “Sheriff’s Deputy Cliff Johnson prepares to send some smut to a fiery death,” photo attributed to Jim Argo.

We're celebrating Banned Books Week this month

As an autistic kid growing up in the era of LeVar Burton’s Reading Rainbow, I knew from an early age there were few places cooler in the world than a local public library. And I am grateful as an adult to have rediscovered that magic (as my Libby app TBR list can confirm). Books have always held such a special place in my heart, and sometimes I find myself overwhelmed by everything on my to-read list, and what that means for all of the stories I won’t have the opportunity to experience. And still, even as a kid who made a summertime game out of reading, writing reviews, and swapping books to repeat the process with my best friend, it was not until I was an adult that I really found characters in which I could really see myself. Yet, at a time when young people should have more access than ever to both characters that speak to them on a personal level, and the magic of stories so very different from their own, we are seeing growing movements rooted in long-fascist traditions of book censorship, book destruction, and limiting resources and access to all of the things that make libraries such incredibly special parts of our communities.

September marks the annual observance of banned books week, an effort that began in 1982, “in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in libraries, bookstores, and schools,” according to the American Library Association. As recently described in the Oklahoman, the fight to censor media–books, magazines, movies, newsletters, statutes–and limit its access to Oklahomans, has a history as far back as statehood. An effort carried on by our state legislature who as recently as this year enacted new censorship laws in the name of “protecting children,” and our federal government alike. So many 2SLGBTQ+ folks know too well our stories, especially our histories, are always parts of efforts to isolate folks, especially 2SLGBTQ+ young folks, by trying to erase our histories and eliminate access to representation. How many of us know that one of the first large-scale acts of book censorship in Nazi Germany was the 1933 destruction of more than 20,000 books from Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin. But how often have we interrogated what history, what future building, what joy, was lost in those volumes? What stories died when those who carried on the oral traditions of stories were no longer alive to tell them.

A pivotal moment around storytelling I often think back to happened in 2011, while I was studying abroad in Switzerland. I took the train with some friends to Geneva for an evening, where I got to hear from Rudolf Brazda, the last known survivor of the Holocaust imprisoned for being gay. A pink triangle survivor. A story he did not begin to tell until he was 95 years old. A few months after I heard his story, as I was still making my way through the text version of it (with my very limited French), Brazda died at the age of 98. But his story is one I will carry with me forever. One I have shared with so many people over the years. And it’s just one of many stories that shape how I engage with the world, with movement work, with our responsibility to one another.

Magnus Hirschfield began his institute in 1919, after starting his work as an activist in 1896 with his pamphlet “Sappho and Socrates,” about a gay man who died by suicide after being coerced into marriage by the demands of compulsory heterosexuality. I’ve found myself seeking out those stories, nonfiction and fiction, past, present, and future that help me better understand my place in the long timeline of queer and trans history. The theme for Banned Books Week this year is “Freed Between the Lines,” a nod to the freedom we find between the pages of a book, and also the threat to freedom that exists when we see book bans and censorship enacted as matters of policy and norms.

Whenever I hear politicians, and the folks who parrot them, talk about the danger of books, I am reminded of the power of stories. So, while you could find plenty of reading inspiration from the long list of titles Oklahoma elected officials are afraid folks will read, here are a few books I’ve read recently that have moved me, that have expanded my knowledge, that have brought me joy, and that I hope might do the same for you.

The Other Olympians Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports by Michael Waters was an audiobook I recently enjoyed on Libby from the OKC Metropolitan Library System. Timely given the Paris Olympics, and ongoing politicization of trans and gender expansive athletes, as well as athletes whose gender presentation is being policed by some members of the public, this book provided me with so many new paths of 2STGNC+ history to explore.

I’ve made an effort to read more about labor and union organizing, and especially the long history of 2SLGBTQ+ folks in those movements, even and especially about how some of the labor siblings we’re fighting alongside might not recognize our full humanity. Steel Closets by Anne Balay uses oral histories to look at queer and trans union members and labor organizers who work outside of spaces that acknowledge the interconnectedness between labor and 2SLGBTQ+ liberation. As someone who grew up in a small town where I did not know any out 2SLGBTQ+ folks, it’s so important for me to encounter these stories of queer and trans community members who feel so much of their identity must remain closeted to survive. And explore that context relative to my own lived experience.

If you’ve followed my time at Freedom Oklahoma, you might know very well that Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston is one of my favorite books. Maybe it’s the first time seeing an example of deeply relatable bisexuality, or the fake timeline in which the 2016 election went a different way and Texas is a politically viable swing state, but all of it wrapped up with some good queer romance made it an instant favorite. And was a huge part of helping me really rebuild reading as a joyful habit a few years ago. And yes, Casey McQuiston’s One Last Stop, and their book written for young adults, I Kissed Shara Wheeler, are both highly recommended by me. And their newest, The Pairing, is top of my TBR list.

As part of a storygraph challenge to read more Indigenous authors, I encountered Fire From the Sky by Sami author Moa Backe Åstot, a young adult coming-of-age story that grapples with the intersection of culture and queerness. The book was not only a lovely read, it offered me so many starting points for expanding my knowledge about Sami culture.

After months in a Libby hold line, I finally recently was able to read the audiobook of Da’Shaun L. Harrison’s Belly of the Beast The Politics of Anti-Fatness As Anti-Blackness from Queer Liberation Library on Libby. It was well worth the waiting and is something I see myself coming back to again and again as I think about not just the intersections, but the intrinsic intertwining of disrupting and eliminating anti-fatness and anti-Blackness (as coordinated and compounding oppressions that cannot fully be disentangled) in order to truly achieve liberation for any 2SLGBTQ+ folks.

Whenever I have friends or family members who are gaining kids in their families, one of my favorite things to do is purchase a selection of books, and I always try to include 2STGNC+ representation in that selection. One of my recent favorites has been Michael Hall’s Red A Crayon’s Story, which inevitably makes me teary-eyed every time I read it with so many of my favorite young folks in my life.

Let the Record Show by Sarah Schulman has been an incredibly important book for me as we continue the fight to decriminalize people living with HIV in Oklahoma. It led me to seek out more history of folks involved in disrupting the harm of inadequate government response to HIV/AIDS and the simultaneous demonization of folks who lived with/are living with HIV/AIDS. Plus, it was a reminder that we exist in a time where there are real resources available from this organizing, from direct action guides to art to the opportunity to speak to folks who were a part of this effort, and even to still organize alongside them. We’ve seen these resources applied to the ongoing failure of government and systems in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, and we’ve them continue to grow and adapt while reminding us that human-centered movements are messy and hard and that we can still achieve so much working together, even as things are messy and hard.

And none of this has to stop at books. You can find so many joyful resources through the Oklahoma Metro Library Queer Oklahoma archive. Maybe you learn from watching the too-soon canceled 2022 series A League of Their Own, that the writing team looked to grad school oral history work done by movement leader Roey Thorpe to root their depiction of queer, Black lesbian house parties in the real stories of our community. Or maybe you’re finding that freedom between the lines by digging into the Gayly archives, learning from social media resources like OK Queer History or Rainbow Community Heritage Project, or having conversations with 2SLGBTQ+ community members to grow and share stories.

Whether you find yourself digging into any or none of these recommendations, I hope you’ll find yourself exploring how you’re engaging with queer stories, and help amplify those stories this month and beyond. Whether those are books in your library, your favorite local bookstores, in zines, in art, or those stories we’re the keepers for in the always important oral traditions of storytelling, our stories matter. I hope you’ll think about how we all get more free from access to these stories, these histories, these glimpses of past, present, and future, in and beyond this Banned Books Week.

In solidarity,

Nicole McAfee (they/she) - Executive Director