
In light of the recent wave of book bannings taking place across The United of States, The Stacks is spending all week talking with people who are impacted by the bannings, ranging from students to educators, authors, and more, to help us think about what is at stake and what we can do.
On today’s episode we talk with the director of the Warren County – Vicksburg Public Library, Katrina Stokes about curating a collection and the process of banning a book in public libraries. Then we talk with Thursday Williams, an actor from the Broadway play What the Constitution Means to Me, and a current college student, about what’s at stake for young people and the things we aren’t taught in school. We also hear from authors Hanif Abdurraquib and Tessa Miller about their favorite banned books.
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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes. You can also find everything we talked about on Amazon.
Katrina Stokes

- Warren County Vicksburg Public Library
- Nancy Drew
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- The University of Southern Mississippi (Hattiesburg, MS)
- American Library Association
- Library Bill of Rights
- Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
- In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
- Outside Over There by Maurice Sendak
- The Lindbergh kidnapping
- Charles Lindbergh
- Maus by Art Spiegelman
- Dachau concentration camp
- Ruby Bridges meme
- American Association of School Librarians
- Mississippi Library Commission
- ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom
- The Freedom to Read Statement
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- The Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
- The Giver by Lois Lowry
Thursday Williams

- What the Constitution Means to Me (Amazon Prime)
- Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
- Maus by Art Spiegelman
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Rosa Parks
- Bayard Rustin
- Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis
- Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
- Trinity College (Hartford, CT)
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu)
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
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