From WRTV:
As a Black, queer woman, Leah Johnson always dreamed of being a storyteller.
“When you can see yourself in fiction, where you can see your experiences reflected back to you, it is an assertion that there is nothing wrong with you. You are not alone,” she said.
Johnson’s debut young adult novel, “You Should See Me in a Crown,” follows Liz Lighty, a Black teen who runs for prom queen to get a scholarship, only to fall in love with her classmate, Mack, who is also competing for the crown.
Time Magazine named the book one of the “100 Best YA Books of All Time” and in 2021 Johnson won an honorary Stonewall Book Award for young adult novels that reflect the LGBTQ experience.
And then came the book bans.
In 2022, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office told local outlets it would review more than 50 school library books for alleged “obscene” material. Johnson’s novel was among the books challenged, according to a list obtained and published by The Frontier.
The state’s Attorney General’s office later walked back its investigation, but for Johnson, an author who primarily writes about people of color and the LGBTQ experience, the damage had been done.
This year, after her home state of Indiana passed a law that bans books deemed to be “obscene” or “harmful to minors” from school libraries, Johnson said she felt she had to act.
“I was raised very religious. And one of the things I learned growing up is that when the spirit calls, you gotta answer – and I felt called to open the bookstore,” she told CNN.
So, Johnson opened the doors to Loudmouth Books, a bookstore in Indianapolis dedicated to the books so often targeted by bans.
“Our principle of the store is that we highlight banned books and uplift marginalized authors,” she said. “And so, every book in the store is for, by or about marginalized people.”
Link to the rest at WRTV
I applaud her entrepreneurial spirit and any bookstore with a “banned book section.” However, several questions come to mind when someone claims a book was banned.
Are there already 25 other books for that marginalized topic on the shelf?
Is the book poorly written?
Does it contain explicit scenes where a non-marginalized topical book would also be banned?
Did the author find one library to say “no” so they can use the banned label to sell their book?
My own public library has said “no” to some of my books. They gave no reason. Maybe they think they’re terrible books. Maybe they don’t have room. I could claim they’re banned. However, none of my books or Miss Johnson’s book are truly banned. You can find them “whereever books are sold.”