WASHINGTON — If you were looking for the book “Sister Outsider” a few years ago at a school in Tennessee, you might not have found it there. But thanks to California Sen. Laphonza Butler, parts of it now live in the Congressional Record.

“Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a Black woman, because I am a lesbian, because I am myself — a Black woman warrior poet doing work — who has come to ask you, are you doing yours?” Butler said on the Senate floor in February, quoting Audre Lorde.

In a quest to highlight book banning across the country, the Democratic senator has taken to reading passages from some of the targets out loud on the floor. “Sister Outsider,” a collection of Lorde’s speeches and essays, was temporarily pulled from the shelves of one school library over its LGBTQ themes.

“Learning should not be political,” Butler said in an interview.

Book banning isn’t an everyday issue for her constituents. A new law in California takes aim at the practice and allows the state to fine schools if they withhold instructional materials about LGBTQ people and other identity groups.

“What I wanted to do on behalf of California constituents is to lift up the organizing and activism, the leadership of our state and bring a voice at the national level to an issue that is impacting now Americans in 23 states,” Butler said.

In 2023, the number of book titles that were targeted for censorship at public libraries increased by 92 percent, and school libraries saw an 11 percent increase, according to the American Library Association.

“We are talking about learning in school and who and what our children actually get to learn. Do they get the true history?” said Butler, who was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last fall to replace the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Butler has only a short time left in the Senate, after announcing she wouldn’t run to keep the seat. In her final months she has been talking about the next generation. Last week, for example, she introduced a bill that would help high schoolers register to vote, and earlier in April she formed a youth advisory council. And she plans to keep doing the banned-book read-alouds.

“As only the 12th Black senator to serve in this chamber and the first openly LGBTQ Black senator to serve, I will not stand by silently as our stories get erased,” she said in her Feb. 29 floor speech.

...continued

©2024 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Visit cqrollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.