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tonight. i'm happy. welcome amanda jones to the pratt library to discuss her book, that librarian part memoir, part manifesto, the inspiring story of a louisiana librarian advocating for inclusivity on, the front lines of our vicious culture wars. amanda will be in conversation this evening by stacey nunn and president of the maryland association school librarians. amanda jones has been an educator for 23 years. at the same middle school she attended as a child. she has served as of the louisiana association of school librarians and won numerous awards for her in school libraries, including library journal librarian of year, a sought after keynote speaker.

amanda is a frequent volunteer for state and national library associations as well as a co-founder of the livingston parish library alliance and founding member of louisiana citizens against censorship. she lives in livingston parish, louisiana. stacey nunn is third career educator with 14 years of experience. currently stacy as a library media specialist baltimore county. she an active member of the american library association and a counselor at large for the 2024 2027 term. additionally she serves on the scholastic publishing. she is the 2024 president of the maryland association of school librarians and is both the advocacy and conference committees. the washington post called that librarian an important and engrossing story. while the book makes clear the importance of what it makes even

more clear is the importance of conscientious. like jones willing to stand up for their libraries. and in a starred from booklist, they wrote jones is frank open emotionally raw and unwavering. what she endured is every librarian worst nightmare. yet she perseveres offering tips and playbooks for how readers can defend books against lgbtqia. plus topics of interest. sexual health and more in their public. a must read in order to understand the deep and lasting impact of online smear campaigns and enduring need to stand up for books. jones is an inspiration. everyone combatting book bans and her memoir slash guidebook should be available to all to help us defend our right to read is my great pleasure to welcome amanda jones and stacey nunn.

thank you. good evening, everyone. thank you for coming out this evening. we're going to get started right with, amanda? i hope you all had the to read the book. if not, do so just in a few words. amanda, tell me, who is amanda jones? how or what inspired you to become a librarian and? how has moved you forward in terms of your goal setting? okay, so who is amanda jones inside? stacey those are really because we're friends. i small town school educator for

24 years. very town, louisiana. as you can probably tell from my accent, i. i just my. mom and dad raised me to be a reader. my mom is a former kindergarten. she's retired teacher. my dad to read. and they they took us to the library every every week. we also we would pile our friends the station wagon and my mom would take all of and i became an educator because i just love my community and i love, i think it's a calling. would you say it's because you're an educator, too? like right. it's a calling. being an educator and i just always, you know, kind of knew that's what i wanted to do. and so that's what i do. and been fortunate to be at the same school for this is my 24th year, but i tell me what the second part of that question and how has it moved you forward with your father's and the in the profession.

i and not just an educator, a teacher and a librarian but i also really believe volunteering in your professional. and so i think that when you want to do something and i bring it back this quote it was the the am i going to say the quote because i'm going to mess it up. but it's my dr. martin luther king jr about when, you know, what your life's blueprint is and you have solid blueprint and foundation and you know what you're going to do in life. you should do it as if god almighty has since you down to do this job and do it to the best of your ability. and that's what i try to do. i am very with so many school friends and librarian friends that helped me along the way to try to be the best can be. and so just i'm very fortunate and i think that as a school librarian i have the best job in the world. i don't think there's a better job in i'm biased because that's what i do. but i think there's a better job than to be a school or an educator. thank you.

what was your inspiration to? write that librarian. you speak a lot in the book about censorship and you know, even now you just touched on community. tell me, what was your inspiration for writing the book. yes. okay. so i'm going to tell the story about how it came to be. okay. because i contrary to popular hate in my community, i didn't i'm not seeking fame and fortune. you know, i would have a educator. i, i, you know, i i've been harassed for the past two years. it's still happening in my town. i've been been harassed and the way this all came about was because i gave a speech as a resident of my community at the public library, not at my school board, not where i work as a resident, my community. i went to the public library and gave a speech about censorship

and about library policy and my community turned on me because i was targeted. two extremists and who created these awful memes and lies about me and circulated them within the community, which kind of spiraled me into having to go seek therapy for the first time in my life and my therapist, you when you wake up one morning when a targeted campaign to ruin your reputation and and they basically write they put the quote the warren buffett quote it takes 20 years to build a reputation 5 minutes to ruin it. they wrote that like they they said what they were trying to do for everyone to see. i was in i was in therapy and she said, you should write down feelings. so i had been writing down different things and a friend of mine said, well, you know, you're writing all of these things down. maybe you should write a book and i'm not. well, i guess i am a writer now, but i, i'm a reader.

i'm a reader. i don't write well i don't like to write. it is a task for me. so i had that it seriously, but in my phone on that, on the app notes app, i was like, well, if i did have a chapter, what would i it what would i call it? and it just so happened that, i don't know if you've heard of the organization need diverse books they do an auction every and you can buy you can bid on these auction items for signed copies of books are author visits and they had a 30 minute zoom with a literary agent and i thought well i you know i know how we buy the books and what determines what we put in our collection. i know that in but how does it become a book. so i bid on this auction just to learn and to raise money for help. need diverse books. well, i won auction and that was the best $75 i ever spent. i ended up talking to agent

named sarah fiske, and we talked and it was supposed to be for a 30 minute zoom. but went for an hour and sarah was like, wait a are you the library that i've been reading about in the newspaper and i was like, yeah, that's me. and said, have you ever thought about writing a book was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. well, that very evening, the tobias literary agency that she works for offered me offered to sign me. yeah. and was thinking about how i mean, i'm not really going to write a book, but didn't cost anything. so. okay, so i said i read over the contract, i sent it to attorney and she's like, looks good to me. --. and now, i don't know, i, i signed it, you know, the very day a senior editor, bloomsbury publishing, emailed me and said, i heard you on the new york first person podcast. have you ever thought about writing a book? and i said, well, actually, i

just an agent and. i let them talk and they an offer i couldn't pass up to, tell my story and get paid for it. and i realized that's how that happens. i realize there are people that write their whole lives waiting for an agent. i am very privileged and i'm very thankful. i i kind of think, you know, i don't like to talk about religion lot because i don't want to i don't like to push my religion on other people. but i believe that, you know, god has a plan for me and this must be my plan. and so, i mean, how else, you know, this is to me. so now the book was not it was hard to write. there's a lot of work, but that's how the book came to be. i just started mapping out the chapters like what i would, and i pulled up those funny chapter names. so one of the titles early on when i was being targeted, harassed, i had tweeted out into the universe, are you there, michelle? it's me, amanda. and it was to michelle obama, not that she ever see it, but

are you there, michelle? and so was you know, she always says that we should take the high road. when they go low, you go high. and so my whole tweet was about hard. it is when you're being smeared and to to go high, it's very but it was also my own judy blume, so that i thought because you know, are you there? god, it's me, margaret. and then i thought, well, judy needs her own separate chapter. so i had ww what would judy do and it just kind of and then i started getting a kick of coming out with these titles that i thought were funny. and so it just kind went from there and my agent helped me shift it around and we had a book proposal and it just became a thing. and then i signed it. then i had to write it. so and i can honestly say when you shared the information you were very humble about it, like you guys, i, you know, got a deal to write a book and that was just that. and we were like, wow, we weren't surprised at all like the group tat wasn't surprised at all how, how did the way

others portray you contribute to the desire for this all book so i you know to put it to kind of tell you how how my was at the time in 2021 i was named national school librarian of the year for school library journal and they paraded me in front of the school board, you know my community was all excited because. look what our librarian did, you know in our community and, my school board, i represent to write a letter where she was crying and she was like, you're one of the best things that's ever happened to my our community. and, and i was on this high, like, you know, this is great and then you fast forward one year and they all turn their back on me, you know, these including my school board representative who was a friend of mine who said i was one of her child's favorite teachers. when answer my calls, i asked

her for help radio silence. not only did she not help, she's actually filed bills in our legislature against librarians, you know. and so all i did was go to our public library. and i gave a speech about censorship. and i talked about how books that attempted, you know, books are, you know, censored, banned, whatever you want to call it. they always target marginalized, historically marginalized communities. it's just a i quoted the trevor project and talk about how libraries are a safe space for kids of the lgbtq. i talked about how people are trying to erase history. i but it was just a speech that every single i know would give the same speech. it wasn't anything risque or i didn't talk about books, but all of a sudden, these minimum, these men that i didn't even know i don't even know these men. i've never interacted with them, don't know why they chose to target me because i wasn't the

only one that spoke that night. 20 something 30 people spoke and said the same thing i did but they started they took my picture and they were saying i was advocating for certain acts with children that i giving pornography and erotica to six year olds and that was circulated and you know when you even see your kindergarten the lady who taught you can the guardian write you're a groomer online it takes hit and i kids watch us as educators kids watch us you know and we have to set a good example and i couldn't have responded on social media it would have no good and i wasn't about to get into some kind of argument on social media with any of these people. so the only thing knew to do to clear my name was to speak to journalists and then to write this book, to let my community know. and when i wrote this book mean, i spilled the tea on the

community. and there's a lot of and i but i didn't name people i tried to shield their but showcase the hypocrisy because i don't want anyone to target them like they've targeted me. i didn't shield the identity of the two men that that have been the cause of this. but i wanted people to know the truth and. the book's been out for about two or three weeks and the communities all abuzz about it, that's all they talked about for a solid week and it restarted the hate and they demanded my that they didn't say firing expulsion from school like i was a kid and but i just wanted my story out there on public record on my terms thank. and so at what point were you able to self-reflect and move forward in a healthy way to get the information down on paper i can recall you sharing quite a

bit being upset at some sometimes it would be a big blob and sometimes it would be just a few words. but you definitely indicated that you were upset and and how it really took you for a turn emotionally and so and what at what point were you able to kind like self-reflect and think about like who you really are, what you are really trying to do and to move forward in a healthy way to get this information down on paper and share your story with the world. so i think. so, stacie, i, we have a good mutual friend stacie in our in a group chat and we've been texting for years we all were supportive. i mean, what are there? five of us? six of us in the there's five, five of us and we and we're from all different states. yeah. five different states as school librarians and we're friends and we, you know, but we have a

mutual friend, a d.c. librarian and casey boyd and casey, i think my self-reflection started back in 2020. and i write about this in the book, having met casey and listening to her and but when this hit, i was i was devastated it but my friends really came through for me and i. i spent a week you when you wake up because i had a death threat and the death threat and how the book opens up is with the the first the third i got and it's very explicit and talks about, you know, click, click we're going to come get you and all this business. i was devastated i'll tell you when i was targeted first started being targeted, i spent several days in bed. i cried so much that my eyes wildschut and i could not see my sinuses swelled shut. i couldn't breathe through the top, through my nose. i, i spent about a week maybe in

a pity party wallowing, but casey was like, right, what are we going to do? how are we going to fight back? and i thought, you know, well, yeah, i've got to i can't just wallow this is not the person i was raised to be wallow pity. and so with the help of other librarians from my state and outside the state and my family and i just decided to fight back and. i've since learned of this quote. there's a quote by author samir ahmed that says that we should use our power and our privilege for purpose. and i am very privileged. i'm a white, straight, cisgender female. the only person more power, you know historically is my white male counterpart and. there's a lot of power. you know, people in my community. oh, there's no privilege. yes. is privilege in being white. there is privilege of being middle class, a married know i'm married. there's privilege in that.

and i thought if i didn't use i have a platform afforded to me for being a state national librarian of the year. that's a waste of a platform form. if i don't speak out, i am well-connected to people at, you know, books and the editor of school library journal and people who are connected. so if i didn't use that to get the word out about what's happening because this is not just happening to me. this is happening to libraries all across the united states. i am not unique. i'm just happened to be one of the loudest. this is happening to a lot of people and i can give you a name and every state and i. i thought i had to speak out and it's otherwise what a you know like what a waste. i don't even know if i answered your question. did i just go on. you're doing great. and so like that kind of betrayal, a little bit motivated. were there any moments that you ever felt like you wanted to be and do? oh, yeah. oh, oh, yeah all the time.

i mean, but we can't i get out. i'll give you a few examples. i don't mind sharing so they call me banana. they say that i'm bananas i'm crazy and they use the banana emoji and all of my and all of their posts about me because they think they're funny because they have emotional, they have the intellect like a four year old child and i so, i'm vindictive in the fact that i, i have funnier nicknames for them that not going to say so that are inappropriate but they're so much more intelligent than than their nicknames. but i, you know, they were they were shirts with bananas on them like and so sometimes sometimes i'll tell you about a weak moment. so in the legislature last there were nine anti library bills in the louisiana and they were all

the it's a it's a dark money nonprofit extremist group that pushes all this and. it's it's you know with the help of our we an extremist super majority of alt right extremist in the house and senate and a dictator governor in louisiana and. my lawyer did say i could still refer to him as kim jong landry, but his name is jeff landry. i had a different name as he said. no, that goes too far close to defamation. stick with kim jong way. so but he you know, we we had nine entire library bills and every day these people were posting going to get a mad like like it was like against me personally like what the how many thousands of librarians and libraries and i so i took it personal so we i'm i helped found an organization called louisiana citizens against censorship. and collectively we sent 44,000 emails to the legislature. we built a coalition of people from all of life that are for

the first amendment and freedom of speech. so, yeah, one of my vindictive moments was we, were in a, you know, i told you about my school board member who said how wonderful, great i was. well, i write about her in the book and her i call her katie because i didn't to sell her real name, but her real name is kelly and representative schiff now representative kelly and, she filed a bill called hb 772 in prison library aliens who attended an american library association conference, two years of hard labor to see that's what i that's how i react to and they were nicknaming it the amanda jones bill this was my former friend this is she's my representative in my district and to be honest with you i voted for because the other two were even worse than her. that tells you so. but she you know, i took it

personally well because they called it the amanda jones bill. i go to school and i would teach and work all day and then after school i would spend hours and hours calling lobbyists legisla building coalitions. and so when i showed up to speak at the legislative hearing hearing. it, we defeated bill and it was fabulous fabulous. i say we because they it was a coalition of all of and they even said the legisla leaders, republican and democrats, said, we got 400 emails each against this bill and two for it. it's the power, the people. so being this gets back to have you ever felt vindictive? three rows of the people that hate me that have started this mess against me were sitting behind me in the legislature calling me names during the the legislative session. i have to endure that. i mean when we won, did i take

out a banana, turn around and face them and eat it on live tv as it streaming in the. yes i did. so i mean maybe i'm immature but what they going to fight me for eating a banana that i mean that's about it that's about as vindictive as i get you know, just my husband. yeah. you should hear all my husband wants to do, man. but we can't because not legal. so, you know and i but also i don't i don't wish violence on people you know, the people that like that that destroy want to destroy else that says more about them than it does about so just you have to grow a thick skin and it takes right into our next question you know like you talked about your child rearing and you spoke about up as a christian and what ways do that, how you responded to some of the

criticism that you received along the way. so grew up southern baptist in the bible belt and but i was my my mom was a sunday school teacher. and but we were raised that god is love, love thy, neighbor as thyself. be a good you help those need that's that's the type christian that i was raised to be so in my speech at that the library board in my original speech what i think have really made them mad i said that i was that god is love. but as an adult i realized that what our community means that god is love only. if you if you have the same political beliefs as they like that they still don't like that to hear them speak. i am a i know i'll tell you my favorite quote. so i made a shirt. it says amanda jones has joined the radical leftists to common

sense morals on the altar of wokeism. so i made a certain i wear it because i'm vindictive, but i just i was raised and i technically i'm still a registered republican that's a whole story in and of itself. i, you know, in louisiana, i was telling stacey this backstage, we're closed primaries. only republicans run. i would only i would not i couldn't vote if i wasn't a republican. have i voted that in years on federal and no, i. i don't i think these issues should be like libraries. that should be a nonpartisan issue. right. it's a constitutional first amendment free speech issue, targeting historically communities violates the 14th amendment. we all be for the 14th amendment. i you know, so i, i don't i don't feel i don't like where i'll just leave it at that.

i haven't voted that way. i don't think human rights should be political. so and i not be a part of any party that that would take trying to take away rights from anyone, whether it be the lgbtq community women, children, whatever or whoever. let's talk a little bit about the support of your family. how were they supportive? and let me add on to that, because your mother was quite the upstander in the book and i love that term because, you know, you digital citizenship and that's kind like what we're teaching kids right now. and so your mother was quite the upstander. can you speak more about her strength and just your the support you received from your family? a whole. so the first few days. my parents and i did not speak because they are very they tend

to have extremist views politically that i do not have. and they initially kind of were taken aback at the hatred and thought that i must have done something something. they quickly fixed that, apologized, but they couldn't rap because because when i tell you that people were targeting harass me. so we're like my local representative then senator and like it wasn't it people of power to and but they quickly they quickly were like what happened? and it was all fine. my mother has been one of my biggest supporters this entire time. my mother has this i you know, this is at a public library board meeting two years ago. and still go to every single one of them and still speak. i will i refuse to be silent, but my mom usually goes with and my mom i don't know, i get to the point of remember this, the book or not, but this is when

kind of had her back. like, you know, mama bear takes the stage. so my mom is 411 know and i really so in court because i am suing these men and we're headed to louisiana court but you know, the men tried to sit behind me in so that my family i couldn't look at my family. and so my mom had of that and she's like, oh, hell no. and that my mom like she don't curse you that. but she was like and she like, is that what you talk about where she squeezed herself in between the two men she and her little feet could even hit the floor and she like it herself. and she's like, yeah. and coffin until they got up and laughed and they're like fine. we'll leave you. you. but my mom has. yeah. something not in the book that i'll share is that my mom.