This podcast is a proud affiliate of Libro.fm. By clicking on this banner, we may earn a proceed of any purchases you make, in which case, we thank you very much!
Olivia Waite Talks Book Bans
Katherine Grant: [00:00:00] Welcome
to the Historical Romance Sampler podcast. I have a special episode today. I am joined by Olivia Waite to talk about book bans and why romance readers should care. Olivia writes queer historical romance, fantasy science fiction and essays, and she's also the romance fiction columnist for the New York Times Book Review.
Since she and I are both members of the Authors Against Book Bans organization, she graciously agreed to join me today to talk about what book bans are, how they're happening in the United States, and why romance readers should care. So Olivia, thank you so much for coming on.
Olivia Waite: Oh no, it's exciting. I'm always happy to talk about book banning and the right to read.
Katherine Grant: Yes. And I just wanna preface that we are gonna be talking in the context of the United States 'cause we're both in the US, Authors against book bans is focusing [00:01:00] on the US, and I don't know much about the international sphere but I think international listeners, you might learn something about how, what's happening in the US and
so that you know what to look for in your community. And so I invite you into the conversation as well.
Olivia Waite: And a lot of this is going to go into a historical, I have some snippets of like historical perspective. 'cause one of the things that I've been writing about and other historical romance authors have been writing about is historically limitations on reading and printing in Britain.
So, mm-hmm.
Katherine Grant: I love that. Okay. Now I'm really, my nerd is excited too. So let's start by defining book bans. In terms of our conversation and generally in terms of authors against book bans, how do you think about the definition of book bans?
Olivia Waite: Well, more specifically, like right now in America, when we, when we say book bans, we mean removing books from public and school libraries.
And it's mostly. The [00:02:00] line is that it's protecting children. And of course that's just, you know, a good sales pitch. It's not what they're actually doing. Let me go briefly through the general process of getting a book into a public or school library. You have a librarian.
They're not just sending a box or a cart down to the local bookstore, filling it up and bringing it in. It's a very involved process with several stages of vetting. They usually look up the title online. They check the Library of Congress categories. They check trade reviews from paid professionals, like not me personally, but people very much like me, who publish reviews in places like Library Journal and book List, and Kikis specifically for librarians and school librarians to use in evaluating books that are coming out.
So. Those will get either starred reviews or very specific descriptions. A lot of times librarians will get advanced copies, so they've read these books themselves. They will check patron requests from the community. So usually if they're buying a book, there's at least [00:03:00] one person in the community who's asking for it.
So by the time a book is on the shelf at a school or public library, it's been evaluated several times over for its quality, its value, and its youth use to the community. So when you pull that book as somebody from outside that system, you are claiming that your fear of whatever identity is in that.
Because as we see these book bans overwhelmingly target queer and bipoc authors and writers and characters, so. You are asserting an authority and an expertise that you do not have. You are saying your fear of other kinds of people is greater than these many layers of expertise that a librarian has been trained to use.
Katherine Grant: Right. Because most librarians have master's degrees, so they are highly educated to begin with before starting that whole system.
Olivia Waite: Exactly. 72% of current book bans in the United States are being initiated by organized groups and elected officials.
These are not people with [00:04:00] expertise. These are people who are grandstanding to make a political push. They are not an overwhelming majority of your community. They are people like Moms for Liberty, and that one Florida dad who issued 200 requests for materials to be pulled.
Katherine Grant: Right. They are not representative but they are trying to eliminate this work from the community rather than say, oh, I don't want my child to read that book.
And
Olivia Waite: Exactly. They're not just keep it within
Katherine Grant: their house.
Olivia Waite: They're not just saying, well, my, I have the right to say what my child reads, which let's not even get into that as a concept. Speaking as somebody who was a kid who read everything, right? Like, kids deserve to read what kids want to read. That's right, I believe.
But anyways, that's a whole, we could do 30 minutes just on that issue alone. So they're not only, they're not only trying to parent their own children. They're trying to parent everybody's children, is what it's coming down to.
I'm gonna give you a recent example. Two [00:05:00] things to take away from this about book bans in the United States are, one, they are organized, and two, they tend to lie. Recently the Supreme Court was hearing arguments in Mahmoud v Taylor about pulling in a children's book from a public library shelf and sitting Supreme Court.
Justice Neil Gorsuch described some of the illustrations in this picture book as having BDSM elements and depicting a sex worker. And this is not at all true. If you go to the actual book, what's on the page is somebody's holding a sign with a cartoon portrait of Marsha p Johnson. Doesn't say who she is, doesn't say what she does.
Just a memorial cartoon doodle. And the BDSM elements are on one page. Somebody's wearing a leather jacket with spikes on the shoulders. Wow. And so he knows it's ridiculous if he says, but somebody's wearing a leather jacket. We must ban this book. He knows that makes this argument look [00:06:00] absurd. And so what he says is he couches it in this language.
So when you see book banners object to sexual content, hardcore pornography in schools divisive elements, what they mean is they're trying to stop queer people and black and brown and people of color. From existing in public as people, right.
Katherine Grant: Which is a reason enough to wanna say, Hey, let's stop this.
And we are all readers in our communities. I will admit that as recently as last year, 2024, I kind of was like, well, I don't have kids. I'm not in school systems. Like this is bad, but it's not really my problem. Mm-hmm. Then more recently as an author, I have been paying a lot of attention to it, but a question I'd love to ask is for romance readers who are reading adult titles from public libraries, or not even from public libraries, from Kindle [00:07:00] Unlimited, from wherever. Does this affect us?
Olivia Waite: Absolutely. It affects us immediately and it affects us even worse down the road. One of the first things that happens when you designate certain types of people as dangerous to children, and we saw this back in the nineties when there were all the arguments about should we allow gay people to teach in schools?
If you designate a class of people as inherently dangerous to children, then it is very easy to make it a crime for those people to be in public or around children at all. And then you have broad criminalization against an entire group of people, and that's bad for all of us adults on the whole.
So you'll see things like teachers getting fired or criminally charged for having a book about Ruby Bridges on the school shelf. And we've already seen some challenges like that in some of the states that have been pushing book bans. You also have the consideration that social media and algorithms and retailers like Amazon are going to be paying [00:08:00] attention to these legal maneuvers, and they're going to start to ban some of the books that you are enjoying as an adult on your own.
They're gonna say, well, it's not worth being sued. If we're carrying explicit sexual content for grownups. It's not worth being sued for carrying queer or trans content. If they start to use child pornography laws to go against trans romance on the internet, then all of us romance adult authors are going to be impacted even if we don't have kids and aren't getting books from school and public libraries.
So this is an old, old pattern. There's nothing new here. We've seen this before. We've seen this in the nineties. We've seen this in, you know, Regency in Victoria and Britain. So. It's a very familiar pattern at this point, and it's important to recognize that it's happening and to do what you can to stop it in your own community.
Yeah. Now, the good news is that there's a lot of ways to get involved, and there's a lot of ways to help. Your local library probably has a friends organization you could join, local school boards have open meetings [00:09:00] where you can stand in support of your community and in support of the children who deserve access to books about the issues that concern them.
Kelly Jensen at Book Riot has been tracking book bans in all 50 states, and she's always got pieces coming out, explaining what's happening in your local area and how you can get involved. You can join Authors Against Book Bans if you're an author or illustrator.
I feel like ALA is doing some legislation tracking. They've also got social media graphics you can download for free and share on your like local networks to get people more informed about what's happening.
Katherine Grant: Yeah, yeah. And one of the things, I was just looking at the ALA website, and they just recently in April released their analysis of what was happening in 2024. Yeah. And one that surprised me was that 55% of the book challenges, the majority of the book challenges that they tracked, were in public libraries, and only 38% were in school [00:10:00] libraries.
Olivia Waite: Mm-hmm.
Katherine Grant: And we've seen in places like Idaho, that there are legislation where, you know, if a book is challenged and deemed inappropriate, it has to be put in a completely different room than the other books. Yes. But most of these libraries are so small. One room buildings. That means they either have to completely eliminate their adult collection of books.
Mm-hmm. Or shut down.
Olivia Waite: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so it is, it's, it's an eliminationist stance. It's soft censorship. It's discouraging purchases that they know are going to be too difficult for them to maintain and impossible in some cases. Yeah.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. And so it puts at risk the general public library in addition to what the children can read.
Olivia Waite: Exactly. And public libraries have been a huge good in American culture at large, and anything we can do to defend them is going to benefit all of us, either now or in the [00:11:00] future.
Katherine Grant: Yes. Now. I'm excited about historical facts. Tell me, tell me about the historical context that you'd like to bring to the conversation.
Olivia Waite: So, when I was writing The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows, which is set in 1820, which is this big year of mass protest in Britain and a lot of the people protesting weren't even eligible to vote. It was a lot of women, and it was a lot of lower class people who just had strong feelings about political structures and events and wanted to make those opinions known however they could.
This was just after the Peterloo massacre, so people protesting for working conditions and the rights of the lower classes had been literally shot by the militia and, there was a lot of restrictions and limitations on what people could and could not print, and could, and could not buy and sell and read.
This is when you had booksellers like Robert Carlisle actually going to prison for printing seditious material, criticizing the political institutions of the [00:12:00] time. You would have militia people sent in to literally wreck up bookshops and look for, you know, radical political materials and illegal things.
You had taxes on the price of paper that meant a lot of small pamphleteers were just immediately put out of business 'cause they couldn't afford to pay to print the materials that they'd been printing. Which is the same kind of soft censorship we're seeing with library purchases right now. And there's actually a lot of historical romances that, that happen around these particular restrictions.
We like to think that the modern day is always more progressive than the past, but it's really wild to go back into some of this history and see, one of the things they didn't want people printing was tracts about, about universal suffrage. So everybody should get a vote that was considered very scandalous and left wing and radical.
And women shouldn't get the vote. And free love, which happened in the Regency. There were multiple people arguing that we should do away with all sexual stigma and people should be able to sleep with whoever they want. [00:13:00] And the government was clamping down on that as obscene. And you know, if they'd used the phrase hardcore pornography at the time, they would've absolutely been putting it on those books.
And so you have a lot of resistance that has to exist kind of on the margins of the legal system. And it's really fascinating and it's a really, it's a really good draw for romance because there's so much tension and there's so much just story possibility around this. So Care and feeding of Waspish widows is all about a printer and a printer in engraver who meets a beekeeper. And it's all about political change in this one small town where the beekeeper lives. And so it's this very friends to lover as well. These big protests are happening and what effects they have on the lives of the people in this one town.
So it's not just who's in charge at the parliament level or the royalty level, it's what are we doing in our local communities who's trying to change things, who's attacking their neighbors, et [00:14:00] cetera, et cetera. You've also got Annick Trent's Sixpenny Octavo which is a sapphic historical romance about a seditious reading club in a pub in London.
And so you have this housemate whose friend has been arrested as part of this crackdown on this political reading club that happens in a tavern. And in order to exonerate her friend, she needs testimony from another woman and they end up slowly falling in love in light of this
complex political sphere where it's literally illegal to be caught reading some of these materials. Yeah. For all that, it's, it's a wonderfully dread free romance, so it's really, it's really on the ground kind of stakes. It's working class regency and it's charming as all get out. It's absolutely wonderful.
Rose Lerner's Lively St. Lemeston series starts with a newspaper man's widow who starts up the press again and the son of a local political family who starts writing with her. He's got an injury from Waterloo, he's got some trauma. His mom is causing political trouble in the town and [00:15:00] that's wonderful and that kicks off her whole small town regency politics series, which is great.
For other queer romances, you've got KJ Charles's unfit to print and Will Darling Adventures where he runs a bookshop with some illicit material in, I wanna say the 1920s with spies and his like dealing with his experiences from the war and the shady spy he falls in love with over the course of three very complicated murderous books.
On the American side of things, we've got Alyssa Cole's, a Hope Divided, which is the second in her Civil War spy trilogy about black spies who are spying for the union during the Civil War. And this one is a black herbalist in a slave state, and she's hiding an escaped union soldier in the attic.
And because they can't be overheard, they start writing letters back and forth to one another and discussing like, philosophical books. And it's, it's just so beautiful. They're slip, so they're sitting just on other side of the [00:16:00] wall slipping notes to one another so they can communicate and it's just gorgeous.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. I think that was my first Alyssa Cole book and I was like, oh, wow.
Olivia Waite: It's so good. That whole trilogy just floors me.
Katherine Grant: Yes. Like, yes.
Olivia Waite: And the last one is also newspaper based. And it's Courtney. Oh, now I say that and then I forgot the actual title, but it's the Courtney Milan
Katherine Grant: Suffragette Scandals.
Olivia Waite: That's a really good one. One of the reasons why I love the suffragette scandal is because it's, it's more hopeful. It's not just about the embattled nature, it's about hope being a muscle that you exercise.
There's a really great metaphor for, for small, small scale, achievable protest in there. That's really, I find it very refreshing and it gives me, I dunno, it's like, it's like a little warm hug you can carry around with you, that book.
Katherine Grant: You know, Jane Fonda said at the [00:17:00] SAG awards this year, if you've ever watched a documentary and wondered what you would do, this is your moment. Yeah, and I feel that way a lot with historical romance where, you know, I write historical romance that is pretty progressive and I certainly read a lot of historical romance that is progressive and always these characters seem to have more courage and face bigger obstacles than I've ever had to face.
Yeah. But. I think that's one of the roles of fiction is to put you in a heightened position. I hope not to have to face something like hiding in an attic, right? But, for all the historical romance readers out there who love that type of story, I invite you to think about how can I, how can you pull inspiration from these characters or from the real life historical people like Richard Carlisle.
I read his memoirs, if you can call them, that his, his daughter published his like journals and letters. Letters, his diaries and, yeah, yeah, yeah. I read that just at the start of this year [00:18:00] and like he was cheerfully going to prison for printing seditious materials and he was like, yeah, and these books and when I get out I'm gonna print again.
Olivia Waite: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And he was writing to writing to the women who were keeping the bookshop open in his absence. And yeah, there was a whole thing.
Katherine Grant: Yeah, he was like, this isn't shutting me down. This is funny. I'm gonna keep going. And so I've been trying to think about that. When I feel discouraged, I'm like, but Richard Carlisle was in prison and he wasn't discouraged.
So.
Olivia Waite: Even like, there's so many stories about this kind of thing. Like if you look at things like the French resistance there's I mean there's so many hideous stories outta the French resistance, but there's also. Mary Burchell, a romance author who wrote Harlequins. She wrote wonderful sweet little Harlequins about the fashion industry in Paris.
And one of the things she did with her money was she and her sister, who were big opera fans, they would travel to Germany in the 1930s and they would accept, they would be put into contact with various Jewish [00:19:00] families and they would accept, you know, things like jewelry and small treasures and movables.
And they were posing as, "well we're these wealthy british Opera fans who don't trust the servants, so we carry all our jewelry with us." And so they wouldn't get searched at the border and they would take all these valuables back to England, meet up with the families who weren't permitted to take anything of value out of the country and give them back to the families.
So they had like both heirlooms and something valuable to start with in a new life in exile. So then it made it possible for people to leave Germany who wouldn't otherwise have gotten out, and she saved like a thousand people's lives doing this. Wow. There was a Polish Countess well, she wasn't a Countess, that's the whole point.
She was there was a Polish mathematician when the Nazis took over. She forged identity documents imposed as Countess to help save the lives of people in the camps. And there's just so many different opportunities. And it doesn't all have to be big, flashy, showy, [00:20:00] like, let's make believe I'm a Countess stuff, although that is the fun stuff to read about.
Yeah. But it's things like supporting a book at your local library. It's things like showing up to an author event. It's things like letting your neighbors know where you stand, and it's letting, letting the people in your community know that. That you support the existence of people who are different and it's, it's very practical and it's on the ground and you can do a lot right where you are.
It's standing up at a local library and telling your neighbors this book deserves to be on this shelf.
Katherine Grant: Yes, absolutely. And that moment when you first start speaking up can feel very scary. Yes. And that's where you can draw courage from these larger than life stories and say, well, I'm gonna learn how to speak up.
I think if you are listening to this podcast, you're a reader and I think any reader can relate to wanting to read something. Yes. And it who, who's gonna tell you not to read it? Like that's so unfair. [00:21:00] Everyone should be able to read what they want to read.
Olivia Waite: I. Yeah. And like if you, if you haven't been to a protest, go to a protest, meet some people wave a sign.
It's very easy. You can stay just for an hour if you want. It's very pleasant when the weather's nice. Yes. You could organize a read-in somewhere at a local park or at a library where everybody brings a book and just sits in silence and reads. Like, there's so many different options. You could plan a protest party and have a great time dancing.
Like it doesn't have to be dour angry, marching, and, and, and violence and threats. That's not what it's about. You can stand the side of the road with a sign and ask people to honk if they support, you know queer books.
Katherine Grant: Right. Or you can go, people will talk
Olivia Waite: and it's great.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. And you can, you can write letters to your school board.
You can write letters to your library board,
Olivia Waite: letters to the editor of your local newspaper. That's a big thing.
Katherine Grant: Yes. Yeah. So for authors, you are more than welcome to join authors against book bans, authors and illustrators. For [00:22:00] readers, there are a lot of different organizations. One that I recommend is every library.
Yes. They're very focused on supporting local organizations, so they will let you know if something's going on in your community. Mm-hmm.
And they also share their wins, which I have really loved. In this year alone, we have seen a lot of scary ban legislation go up in different states, and we've also seen it get shut down because readers and community members have said, no, that's not acceptable. That's not what we want.
Olivia Waite: Yeah. If you follow authors against book bans, even if you're not an author, if you follow authors against book bans on Instagram, blue Sky... a lot of those social medias will have location specific and state specific information, so when there's action, then you can you can like find a short little script and a guide for what to do, and it makes it really easy and it makes it low key.
And you don't have to, you don't have to sit here and feel bad about things as a form of activism. You can, you make a phone call to a senator to support your public libraries. You make a phone call to your local [00:23:00] representative. You send a letter to your local library, and then great, you've done your protest for the day.
And you can go and sit in the garden and read say a KJ Charles books about an obscene bookstore.
Katherine Grant: Yes. Absolutely. Are there any other points about book bans that you wanted to make before we wrap up?
Olivia Waite: One of the other things that I wanna say is buy and print when you can. Mm-hmm. One of the things that we know is when books are starting to get banned. It's easiest to go after the electronic editions and to pull things from, from access. That's the easiest way to pull the plug on those.
But they're not gonna come into every house and take every print copy unless things get much, much worse than they are. Buying in print is the best way to support authors. It's the best way to support libraries. Well, and, and publishers and just do what you can. And if you can't afford to buy all the books you want, because who of us can then you can [00:24:00] spread the word on social media, post about what you're reading, what you're enjoying about it.
Support your library events . If your library is doing a drag story hour, absolutely show up to support them there. Check out local queer authors speaking in various bookstores around town. Just go sit in the audience and hear a book talk.
Katherine Grant: Yes. Yeah. And the more you read, the more you know, you know, so Exactly.
Try picking up those banned books if you hear that they're banned and see what you learn. What, yeah. What are they afraid of you learning from these books?
Olivia Waite: Yeah. 'cause they, they're not doing this because we have no power, is the thing to remember. They're doing this because it's powerful. They're doing this because what these books have to say is important and meaningful and honestly fun.
Yeah, a lot of these books, like the Supreme Court book that I cited earlier was called Pride Puppy, and it's adorable. It's about a dog who gets lost at a pride parade and they have to find him. And it's just, it's so cute. And it's so sweet. And everybody's in their [00:25:00] best, like pride costumes. There's a lovely drag queen who helps the puppy puppy and it's just, it's just darling and joyous.
Yeah. And you look at it and what's, what are they afraid of? Joy? Why does Joy scare them so much?
Katherine Grant: Yes. Yeah. Well, Olivia, thank you so much for coming on and talking about book bans, why romance readers should care, and for all the book recommendations. I'm gonna, you know, collect all of those and I'll put them in the show notes and also probably in a little Instagram carousel.
So listeners, don't worry, you'll find those book recs. Besides The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows. Mm-hmm. Besides that, are there any books or projects or anything you'd like us to check out of yours?
Olivia Waite: Well, currently my big project is a sci-fi sic mystery series. Ooh. So, [00:26:00] yes, and there is it, there is a library angle.
The library is where all of the books are stored, that you place all your memories in between bodies on this spaceship. It's very fun. So it's this big 1920s style cruise ship in space, and your memories are stored in the library, and then every time your body runs out, you're issued a new one and they put your memories right in.
So you just kind of keep going on this thousand year journey across the stars. And ship's detective, Dorothy Gentlemen, has been taking a bit of a break. She had a bad breakup. It was a little bit traumatic, and so now she's just been resting in the library until she wakes up in a body that's not hers, just as a murder's been committed.
Ooh. And so she has to figure out what's happening and why, and is somebody killing people? And it's one thing to kill a body because that's not a big deal on this ship. But then she finds somebody who's been erasing books from the library. Oh gosh. Which is much more serious. Yeah. Well that sounds fantastic.
[00:27:00] Yeah, that first one is called Murder by Memory, and that's just out. And the second one is called Nobody's Baby, and that's up for pre-order coming out this spring.
Katherine Grant: Ooh, that's so exciting.
Olivia Waite: It's been really fun to write and I'm so excited.
Katherine Grant: Well, thank you again and I'll also put a link to your website and I'll be tagging you on Instagram, so readers.
Listeners can find you and your books.
Olivia Waite: That sounds wonderful. Thank you so much for this. Thank you.
That's it for this week! Don't forget to subscribe to the Historical Romance Sampler wherever you listen, and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Until next week, happy reading!