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In Book Takes, authors share three things readers will gain from their book. This weekend, US author Kirsten Miller discusses book bans, her misunderstood and maligned Southern home, and why libraries are humanity’s greatest resource.
How do you fight book bans? If you’re a US author who burst upon the scene with stories about a band of delinquent girl scouts adventuring in a secret city beneath New York’s Manhattan, you write another book.
Kirsten Miller, author of the Kiki Strike series, has written 15 books, including a series with US actor Jason Segel. When she finished writing with Segel, Miller moved from kids’ books to fiction for adults and her first novel, The Change, was described as a feel-good feminist revenge fantasy.
Miller’s latest novel is Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books, a story set in Troy, Georgia, close to the North Carolina mountains where Miller was raised. In Troy, Lula Dean decides to cleanse the town’s reading habits so, she removes all banned books from public spaces, leaving the townsfolk to read books she deems “appropriate”. But a small group refuse to be told what they can and can’t read.
Miller, who now lives in New York, shares three things readers of Lula Dean might find themselves contemplating as they turn the pages.
One book can change everything
There are people here in the United States who support book banning because they believe books can be dangerous. They’ll insist they’re only protecting the children. They worry innocent young library patrons might stumble across books that will scare them senseless or seduce them with dirty scenes. At least that’s what the book banners claim, of course. Oddly, they never seem interested in banning romance novels or horror stories. Those always stay on the shelves. Here in the US, the books banned most often feature LGBTQI+ characters or tell the terrible truth about slavery. Book banning isn’t about protecting American children. That’s a lie. It’s about hiding truths the book banners don’t like.
I’ve never heard of anyone being irreparably scarred by a book. I have, however, met plenty of people who’ve been saved by one. At some point, each of us will come across a book that inspires, consoles, educates or enlightens us. We will all find a book that alters our lives for the better. That’s what happens to the characters in Lula Dean. The epiphanies they experience are profound, funny—and completely unexpected. The fact is, you can never guess what book might help another person—or how it could change them. And that’s why all library books must remain on the shelves.
You can’t judge a book by the cover
This is literally true of the books in Lula Dean’s Little Library, in which the covers of “wholesome” books (The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette) have been placed on banned books (Beloved). But the saying also applies to the people you’ll meet in Lula Dean. These are the townsfolk of Troy, Georgia, a village set deep in the American South, a region that’s often misunderstood and maligned. We meet the people of Troy one by one as they borrow books from Lula’s library that end up changing their lives. Each character is flawed. Some are dangerous. Others are downright hilarious. But all of them are human. They aren’t the stereotypes some might be expecting. They’re the kind of people I knew when I was growing up.
In the US, we often make the South a scapegoat for the worst of our problems. Like much of the world, America suffers from the diseases of racism, antisemitism and misogyny. Pretending these problems only exist in the South (of the US) has allowed them to spread unchecked in other regions. Here in the United States, it’s now routine to demonise those with different backgrounds, religions or genders. We seem to have forgotten each other’s basic humanity. The only way to address our troubles is to take off our covers, so to speak, and get to know one another.
Libraries are humanity’s greatest resource
People say information is power, and it is. But I prefer to think of information as freedom. Libraries are archives of human experience. The books on their shelves tell us what’s possible. They let us learn what has been done, what’s left to discover and what should be avoided at all costs. They show us how other people live and help us build empathy for other humans. Books help us figure out who we’d like to be.
When we allow other people to choose what information we’re able to access, we’re allowing them to narrow our prospects and shape our destinies. That is exactly what the book banners want. They don’t want us following our own paths. They want us to follow theirs. Every banned book is a freedom denied. Every library that’s ransacked is a tragedy.
Lula Dean follows the people of Troy as they discover their own paths. Sometimes, they veer into very dark territory. However, while the issues addressed in the book may be serious, the journey you’ll take will be entertaining, hopeful and filled with laughter. By the time you reach the end of the book, you may just see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller (HarperCollins, $37.99) is out now.
