Lexie Bean on Nostr: It's banned book week. & Let me tell you, having a banned book might ~~sound cool,~~ ...

It's banned book week. & Let me tell you, having a banned book might ~~sound cool,~~ but the reality is harder if you're not one of the 30 books that gets put on the fun Barnes & Noble banned book shelf. These lists have thousands of books - which disproportionately impacts first-time authors and qt & bipoc authors writing with nuance and inspiration from their lived experiences. It takes a lot of internal work not to internalize these additional barriers.

There are a lot of ways you can support those of us who end up on these lists beyond buying and elevating the books, or even signing relevant petitions. You can write reviews (for example, many will go out of their way to give trans books like mine one star), request your local library and store to carry specific titles, host a book club, bring any of us as guests at your school, support our future projects in all stages of creation, etc. Here is me the first time I held a copy of "The Ship We Built" after six years of working on it. I was so happy.