A Tale of Two Days, with Books

 On Monday I decided to give myself a pandemic treat: I went to a swanky grocery store in a neighboring town. It was fun. I love my local Food City, but every now and again want to spend extra money for fancy cheese or exotic produce, or at least something I haven't eaten repeatedly in past few months. We haven't been traveling, we almost never eat out these days, only 3 restaurants deliver to our farm, and while I enjoy cooking I have lately been bored.

I needed to hand in my library books and get fresh ones, and since I was headed to Johnson City, I decided to go to our branch library, Avoca, which was on the way, instead of the downtown library I usually go to. Avoca's tiny but lovely. I don't go there often, since the downtown library is on the way to ALI world headquarters. I sit on one of the boards at the main library, and I'm there every week, and nearly every employee there knows me by sight as Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, one of the two writers in Bristol. (The other is Jennifer Estep: you should look her books up, they're fabulous.) 

So I was anonymously perusing the New Fiction section at Avoca when I heard a man in his 60s say, angrily, "I need to make a complaint about the selections in this library."

As many of you know, I've been on a fulltime rant against censorship lately, so my ears perked up.

The man said, "Where is the new ---?" and he named some popular novelist I immediately forgot.

The librarian said, "Bert, I'm so sorry. I tried like anything to get it in last week, but I couldn't. And now we're getting a new check-out system so I won't have it until the first of March."

The man said, plaintively, "No new books for a month?"

The librarian commiserated, and said, "I've got two I can't wait to read, and no, they won't be in the system until March."

The two then started slanging on James Patterson, while I carefully selected a Nora Roberts novel. Nora Roberts just gave a grant to fund ALI in two West Virginia elementary schools next year, and I am a big fan. Then I walked back to the children's section and they had Fighting Words prominently displayed.

That was Monday. Yesterday was ship-out day at ALI. This is the day, four times a year, when we send our enrolled classes teacher sets of 6 books each. Their students will chose one title from what we send and order it for themselves, to keep. This year we have 186 classes enrolled, from North Carolina to upstate New York, so it's a lot of work. We get extra volunteers in and start early. It turns out our efforts to organize and streamline our processes are paying off: we finished the ship out in a little over 3 hours yesterday, including our lunch break. (Come work ship out day! We'll feed you free lunch.) 

Here's what we shipped out. Third grade: The Bad Guys (graphic novel), Who Was? (biography series, many different subjects), Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer, Power Forward, Coraline, and Wish. Fourth grade: Dog Man (graphic novel), Mummies Exposed (nonfiction), The Graveyard Book, Bud Not Buddy, Front Desk, and Aru Shah and the Song of Death. Fifth grade: Brave (graphic novel), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Brown Girl Dreaming, Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Amina's Voice, and Hoot. I wish you could have seen how beautiful these books were, stacked in piles, gleaming, bright. 

At the end of the afternoon some of the teachers from local schools came to pick their books up themselves. If they do this, thus sparing us postage costs, they get to pick out some free books from our shelves of books that aren't part of our school program. It was really fun to talk books with the teachers and learn what interests their students. Bright nonfiction is big. Graphic novels, of course. Rick Riordan, Dave Pilkey. 

If kids can get their hands on books that excite them, they'll read them. When they practice reading they get better at it. When they get better at reading they do better in school. They graduate high school, they have more options, they can get better jobs. Books are a way out of poverty.

But they're more than that. Books are a way into imagination. They're fantasy, adventure, space travel. They can take a person far away from their home, put them into other people's experiences, change their lives. 

Or, you know, just teach them a lot of fart jokes. But I'm okay with that, too.

The People In Your Neighborhood

 Warning: what comes next is a bill introduced to the TN state legislature followed by two emails, one  deeply homophobic and hurtful to many people.

First, Tennessee HB0800/SB1216, introduced into the House by Bruce Griffey and now co-sponsored by Todd Warner and Susan Lynn, introduced into the Senate by Frank Niceley:

As introduced, prohibits the state textbook and instructional materials quality commission from recommending or listing, the state board of education from approving for local adoption or from granting a waiver for, and LEAs and public charter schools from adopting or using textbooks and instructional materials or supplemental instructional materials that promote, normalize, support, or address lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, or transgender issues or lifestyles. 

It's worth noting that "supplemental instructional materials" by definition includes every single book in a school's library. Books don't need to be taught to count under this bill, they simply must be inside a school.

Next, an email I sent yesterday to Rep. Griffey and Sen. Niceley:

Dear Representatives Griffey and Warner,

 

As you promote HB0800, which blatantly discriminates against LGBTQIA parents and children in our state, may I remind you of the fiasco of North Carolina's HB2, which was estimated to cost that state 3.76 billion dollars in lost revenue before it was repealed?

 

That would be a disaster for our state, and it would have your names on it.

 

Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Next, the email I received from Griffey in reply, in its entirety: 

In my opinion, and that of the vast majority of Tennesseans, schools are not the place for teaching or indoctrinating children with LGBTQ lifestyles or values.  Our schools are for learning reading, writing, and math.

Apparently, according to Griffey, Tennessee schools are a place for indoctrinating children with homophobia and hatred. But as I read his email I saw how it was wrong in many, many places. (I could start with expecting schools to teach history and science, though that's a trivial point.) That the "vast majority" of Tennesseans think the way Griffey thinks they do is clearly false: a bit of math and Pew Research statistics tells us that in 2019, 47% of Tennesseans polled said they support gay marriage. That's lower than the national average, but it's unlikely to have dropped in the last 3 years and I'd never call 53% of anything a "vast majority."

Then I pondered the phrase "LGBTQ lifestyles and values." I thought of the LGBTQIA (I prefer to write it that way) people I personally know, and what their lifestyles and values are. Some are committed churchgoers. Some are Christian pastors. They go to work, they go to school, they raise their children. Some are athletes. Some are artists. The only difference I consistently note between an LGBTQIA value and lifestyle and an anti-LGBTQIA value and lifestyle is that the LGBTQIA people are far less likely to be prejudiced.

Then I thought about what would make Griffey, a 70-year-old cis het white man, feel so convicted that LGBTQIA lifestyles were all that much different from his, and I realized, he probably thinks he doesn't know any gay or trans people. He only sees media representation--something he can easily "other." Anyone he encounters in his everyday life he assumes must be straight and cis, because if not he'd be able to tell, and he can't.

Here's news to Griffey: according to latest research, non-heterosexual people make up about 6% of the population. In Tennessee, trans people make up about 0.45%. So, say Bristol, the city where I live, has 40,000 people. That's 2400 gay people and 180 trans people. In Bristol, TN.

The Nashville metro area has a population of about 1.9 million. That means 114,000 gay people and 8550 trans people. These are not insignificant numbers. 

I just now got back from running a few errands. I went to the bank, the post office, and the local Food City to pick up prescriptions and breakfast sausage. I nodded hello to some strangers and was helped by a pharmacy tech and a clerk when my prescriptions wouldn't ring correctly. I probably encountered 20 people, all except the pharmacist (hi, Cathy!) unknown to me. How many of them were gay or trans?

I have absolutely no idea. Why not? Because it's none of my business. I'm not entering into an intimate relationship with any of them. I don't need to know their sexuality or gender identity, and I can't tell it by looking at them. Not only do I have no reason to assume they're straight and cis, I have no reason to care either way. I don't want to hear about Senator Frank Niceley's sexual past either. It's none of my business unless it breaks the law.

My husband works in a busy ophthalmology office--about 60 staff, and let's say 500 different patients every week. How many of those 560 people are gay or trans? You could do the math to show that, statistically speaking, there are gay people in the office every day and trans people at least some of the days, but also--it would be none of your business. Sexuality and gender identity aren't part of being a physician, an employee in a medical office, or an ophthalmology patient.

You'd think this would be obvious to everyone, but, it seems, it isn't. Representative Todd Warner hasn't responded to me. Neither has Representative Susan Lynn, though her Wikipedia page shows the following under Political Career, in its entirety: (TW)

In March 2018, she sponsored legislation requiring Tennessee schools to prominently display "In God We Trust".^[4]

In 2020, Lynn voted against removal of a bust honoring Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest from the Tennessee State Capitol building.^[5]

Lynn proposed an anti-transgender bathroom bill in 2016.^[6] She called transgender identity a "mental disorder".^[6][7]

With Bill Ketron, Lynn sponsored a "no-go zone" bill in February 2015.^[8]

I really believe that most Tennesseans are better than this. I know our students deserve better than this. Children need to see themselves and their families reflected in the books they read. A brief mention of a female character's wife in a middle grades novel about a lost dog? That's as important as being sure the books our kids don't only feature white characters and white history. Our schools and books need to represent reality, because our students already do.

Yesterday HB0800 was scheduled to be discussed in the Finance, Ways and Means Committee but was removed from the calendar. If we speak out, we can be sure this loathesome bill never gets put on the floor. You can find out how to contact all these people at Tennessee General Assembly (tn.gov) Please do. The kind barista in the coffee shop you go to every day, the caring doctor who monitors your elderly mother's blood pressure, the cheeky kid who's your child's new best friend--or, possibly, your own child--depend on it.