My Dreams Live in a Difficult Reality
Writing fiction about book bans: the feel-good novel “Lula Dean” (and then there’s me)
Hello friends!
It’s been a hell of a week, hasn’t it? Two weeks, actually.
I was going to discuss how writing the same idea in two formats—a letter to the editor and an essay—works to different ‘reader goals,’ but the news upheaval this week pushed my letter to the Washington Post back from last Tuesday to today. So I’ll have a look at that idea next week. I’m going ahead with my thoughts about Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller.
Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books
In spite of the importance of the freedom to read and the major book challenge/ban issues across the U.S., I haven’t seen a lot of fiction for adults on the topic. I’m querying a novel on the subject and hoping an agent finds my take on the issue worthy.
A few weeks back I found Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books. I don’t know where I saw this—it wasn’t a review. I knew nothing about the novel, but I bought it just for the topic. Reading it, I realized it was very different from what I’m trying to do. When I read the publisher’s blurbs, I found that it’s advertised as a hilarious summer read.
The novel is set in the present day in the small town of Troy, Georgia which is full of racism and has a statue of one of the town’s principal men, Augustus Wainwright, a Confederate Army general who owned a plantation and accumulated wealth on the backs of enslaved people. A few Gen X women have a longstanding feud based on their oppositional worldviews. One of them is Lula Dean, whose argument with the world is that she isn’t getting the attention she deserves. Decades after she was cut from the cheerleading squad in favor of a girl who was raped at a party while drunk (thus, Lula thinks the girl is a whore and not worthy of representing the squad), Lula still holds a grudge.
Lula finds that she can get the attention she craves through challenging books in the public library. Books are removed from the library but kept in storage while the battle is active. The argument is one based on the reality of book bans: the book banners feel young people shouldn’t be exposed to books with sensitive topics as they say these aren’t age appropriate. Lula goes even further suggesting that no one should have these books available. So nothing about queer people (specifically gay and transgender here), nothing about human bodies or their functions, nothing about violent crimes like rape, and nothing factual about history that makes (White) people feel bad.
In a fit of self-righteousness, Lula decides to place a little free library in her yard. She purchases discarded books from a charity shop very cheaply. These are not titles anyone is interested in, things about how Southern ladies should conduct themselves and the like. Out of date and out of touch—like Lula.
Major spoilers ahead
Early on, a college-aged woman, the daughter of one of Lula’s ‘enemies,’ replaces all the books in the little library with some of the books that were removed from the public library. She leaves the original book jackets on the replacement books. So now instead of books on Southern life or decor, there are books like Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret and The Diary of Anne Frank as well as a spell-casting instructional, books on gay romance, etc.
Being who I am—a librarian with practical experience in processing books—when I read this, the first thing I thought was: how fortunate that all the books were hardcovers with book jackets and that all the replacement books were exactly the same size. (I’m guessing no one but a librarian would pause over this.) That bothered me until I read further and realized the novel isn’t supposed to be realistic. It aims to have a crisis and an ending much like the final fun in The Maid—everything works out splendidly in the present for the good guys and they will go on to have fabulous futures. The bad guys get their comeuppance. Its goal is to poke fun at a certain element of society.
When I finished Lula Dean, I found it to be very much a morality play. The characters each represent one dimension or characteristic. There is the sexual predator town mayor, the innocent man who’s been criminalized, the activist college student, etc. Lula herself is also one-dimensional. She’s a villain. 1
Book lessons
When the townspeople pick up books from Lula’s little library, each happens upon the perfect book to change their life. It seems no one knows anything about any of the books. (Did no one ever check any of them out of the public library while they were there on the shelves?) This gives the author the opportunity to tell her readers about each book and why it matters. Still, it makes most of the townspeople look pretty ignorant. That there is a woman whose husband is a White supremacist and who doesn’t understand the meaning of the flags he has around the house feels implausible. That she doesn’t know anything about Anne Frank before reading her diary is truly strange. The fact that she missed the last semester of high school because she was pregnant is meant to account for this.
Some variation of the above scenario repeats with multiple books. For each of these books, we receive a summary lesson about that book (e.g., Are You There, God? = a young boy learns that menstrual periods exist, they are normal, most women have them at some point, and that’s why his mom has those large cotton pads in her bathroom cabinet).
Lula the loser
Ultimately Lula loses her battle to ban books. She is publicly humiliated and proven to be a hypocrite whose own taste in reading materials tends to pornography. And once she loses, all the good guys win big, transforming their town, removing the Confederate statue, and setting racial relationships on a better path.
So, yes, it’s a feel-good read with an abundance of joy at the end. Which, I believe is the mission of the book—to spread joy and teach a bit about some iconic titles in the process. It achieves its goal.
I’m in a different space
I happened to read in The Creative Act today: “The personal is what makes art matter. Our point of view … Consider the difference between art and most other trades. In art our filter is the defining factor of the work.” While I bought Lula Dean to see if it is a novel like mine, I’m trying to do something very different.
What incites my antagonist to book banning is exactly what incites my protagonist to defend books. They were abused by the same predator as kids. The antagonist has experienced trauma. My protagonist is not always right. She, too, has a messy life in which she has to come to terms with the past. And between the two of them are their own teen daughters and a high school full of books and students. When books are challenged by the antagonist, I figure my reader knows something about them. So when all of James Baldwin’s books are challenged, my goal isn’t to give the reader a lesson on who Baldwin is or what his books are about. It is to have the protagonist fight against having those books removed because important ideas are being kept from the students.
I hope this very different type of novel, my novel, finds its readers. May it find its place on library shelves.
What I’m reading
The Creative Act by Rick Rubin: I had a cursory read of this last week and am going through it again. I think I’m not good at manifesting things into the world because there is a feeling of nonsense in that for me. If it worked, cancer victims would be manifesting their cures and any number of people would be manifesting world peace. So I like the idea in The Creative Act that artistic endeavors are not that kind of manifesting. It’s more that an idea exists outside the self (yes, you can imagine a muse bringing that idea to you) and you either take it or leave it. Something like Elizabeth Gilbert’s discussion in Big Magic. Rubin includes tips on being open to ideas and hanging onto them once they appear. He believes “talent is the ability to let ideas manifest themselves through you.”
Library and book challenge/ban news
Alabama House Republicans re-file bill that could expose librarians to criminal penalties from the Alabama Reflector
HB 4, sponsored by Rep. Arnold Mooney, R-Indian Springs, would apply certain criminal obscenity laws to public libraries, public school libraries and “employees or agents acting on behalf of the legitimate educational purposes of the K-12 public school libraries or public libraries.”
The bill, which does not apply to institutions of higher education, does not outline the level of felony or misdemeanor that would be applicable. Other penalties under the Alabama Anti-Obscenity Enforcement Act include mostly fines, with some potential imprisonment.
The bill, which has nearly 50 co-sponsors including Republican leadership, would add another definition of “sexual conduct” to the Alabama code: “In K-12 public schools or public libraries where minors are expected and known to be present without parental presence or consent, any sexual or gender-oriented conduct, presentation, or activity that knowingly exposes a minor to a person who is dressed in sexually revealing, exaggerated, or provocative clothing or costumes, who is stripping, or who is engaged in lewd or lascivious dancing.”
Mooney’s legislation provides 15 business days for staff to move material to an age-restricted section; remove material; cease conduct; or make an official determination that the material or conduct does not violate the law.
If the parent, resident or guardian does not receive not receive notice within 25 days, the copies can be taken to law enforcement.
A Florida school district banned ‘Ban This Book.’ Author wants it reinstated from WTXL news
“To remove these books is bad enough. To remove my book, because it dares to mention books you have already banned, is erasure of the highest order,” he continued in his letter. “Every reader deserves to see themselves and their families represented positively in the books in their libraries. Studies also show that diverse books build empathy and reduce prejudice, creating a more just, more compassionate, and more peaceful world for us all.”
…
“Ban This Book,” published in 2017, is a novel about a Black fourth-grader who learns her school library has banned her favorite book because a classmate’s parent argued the book wasn’t appropriate for children. The protagonist pushes back by “starting a secret banned book library out of her locker,” but “things get out of hand, and (the student) finds herself on the front line of an unexpected battle” over book banning, reads the author’s online synopsis of the novel, which is aimed at children 8 and older.
In February, the chair of the county Moms for Liberty chapter submitted a challenge of Gratz’s book to the district’s book objection committee, claiming the novel “depicts or describes sexual conduct.” The chapter president, Jennifer Pippin, also told CNN she challenged the book because “basically it’s promoting banned books to children ages 4-12.”
The committee reviewed the book and voted in April to keep it on school library shelves, but the Indian River County school board in May voted 3-2 to remove the book from school libraries, agreeing with Pippin that the book was inappropriate.
Court OKs Florida school board to interrogate 7-year-old student in book ban litigation from the Ledger
A federal judge is letting a Florida school board take a shortened deposition of a 7-year-old student who is among a group of plaintiffs accusing it of violating the First Amendment because of its book bans.
Escambia County School Board members have OK'd the removal and restriction of a broad swath of school library books. They include "And Tango Makes Three," a children's picture book detailing the true story of a same-sex penguin pair at a New York City zoo.
The 7-year-old, identified as "J.N." in court records, says she wants to check it and other titles out at her school library.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Zachary Bolitho said in a Monday ruling that a "limited" deposition wouldn't be unduly burdensome for the child.
Alpena County moves to fire library officials over sexually-themed youth books from Bridge, Michigan
ALPENA — In an escalation of Michigan’s book wars, the Alpena County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday began the process of firing all members of its public library board over their handling of a handful of children and teen books with sexual themes.
The move comes two weeks before voters in this politically conservative community in northwest Michigan go to the polls to decide on a millage request to keep the library open.
An organized campaign against the tax includes yard signs urging voters to “Vote NO on Library Grooming” and includes an image of a man handing a book labeled “X Rated” to a young girl.
Another book ban battle emerges in Florida, with high stakes for the First Amendment from the Tallahassee Democrat
This case emerges in Florida's northeasternmost county, Nassau, wedged between Jacksonville and Georgia.
Facing a federal lawsuit over its removal and restriction of school library books, county school district officials say such decisions are actually protected by the First Amendment, which they are accused of violating.
"(Our) actions constitute government speech for which no First Amendment protections attach," they wrote in a Friday court filing.
Can't wait to read about your protagonist when the book comes out!
Last summer a podcast interview with Rick Rubin on The Creative Act really captivated me. I listened twice. I bought a few copies of the book, gave some away and my copy has sat patiently on my shelf ever since. Maybe this is the nudge I need to read it. I love how the hardback cover is cloth.