Travelers waiting for a flight at Los Angeles International Airport can pass the time by eating, having a drink, people-watching or, perhaps, reading a forbidden book.
At least that's the intention of a collaboration between the Los Angeles Public Library and LAX that will provide visitors to the world's eighth-busiest airport with a free one-week pass to the library's digital collection.
If the proposal receives final approval from the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday, screens throughout the airport will soon invite people to read a banned book using a QR code to obtain a temporary library card, which can be issued to anyone, regardless of where they live.
The card will give readers access to bestsellers as well as books that have been pulled from shelves in other parts of the country, such as Toni Morrison's novel “The Bluest Eye” and the graphic novel “Let's Talk about It: The Teen's Guide to Sex, Relationships and Being a Human.”
Encouraging travelers to read a banned book may seem like a minor skirmish in a broader culture war. But advocates of open access to literature see programs like the one at LAX (and Banned Books Week, which runs Sept. 22-28) as a counterattack to efforts to ban books for reasons including their treatment of sexuality, race, violence or the occult.
“LAX is the perfect place to reach millions of people with this message,” said Alexia Valencia, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez, who introduced the proposal to the City Council this year. “Los Angeles is the place where people can come and have access to those ideas and books. That’s what Los Angeles is all about.”
More than 75 million travelers will pass through LAX in 2023. The banned books program will expand “the ways in which art, literature and other forms of free enrichment are available to the traveling public,” said Lauren Alba, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles World Airports, which owns and operates LAX.
The City Council approved Rodriguez’s motion to facilitate “access to prohibited books at each airport terminal.” The details, worked out by the library and Los Angeles World Airports, will be the subject of a procedural vote by the City Council on Tuesday.
Implementation will be handled by the library and the Los Angeles airport and “could begin in the next few weeks,” Alba said. The library and the airport will pay for the program with existing funds.
“The library’s mission is to defend freedom of expression and oppose censorship,” said Jené Brown, director of emerging technologies and collections at the library. “We believe in providing access to all content, and the goal of this initiative is to support the freedom to read.”
The collaboration between the Los Angeles Public Library and LAX builds on a program the library launched in 2023, Read Freely, which provides a library card and immediate access to books that have been subject to bans. According to the library, about 450 Read Freely library cards have been issued nationwide and 120 e-books have been checked out.
The American Library Association compiles an annual list of books it considers “most challenged” after school districts or local governments select them for removal or restriction. In 2023, the three most challenged books were Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” George M. Johnson’s “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and Juno Dawson’s “This Book Is Gay.” All three are available through the Los Angeles Public Library’s digital library card.
According to PEN America, books have been banned in 33 states, with Florida having the most. In Orange County, Florida, nearly 700 books by authors as diverse as Marcel Proust and Amy Poehler have been removed from school libraries.
California ranks low on the list. In 2022, the William S. Hart Union High School District in Santa Clarita banned a book titled “This Book Is Gay” in the state.
First organized in 1982, Banned Books Week has become an annual campaign by the American Library Association, which reports that more than 4,200 books were targeted for censorship in 2023, a 65% increase over 2022.
Greg Burt, vice president of the Family Council of California, a Christian organization, said opponents of book bans are misrepresenting the efforts of organizations like his to control children's access to some books.
“We are not having an honest conversation about this issue,” she said. “It’s just slogans and rhetoric, and pretending that there is no book that a minor should not have access to. We should be able to prevent some materials from being accessible to minors without being considered a literary banner.”
The LAX initiative comes at a time when California libraries are coming under increased scrutiny from conservative groups. In Fresno County and Huntington Beach, review committees made up of residents have been created to evaluate the accessibility of some titles to children.
Last month, lawmakers in Sacramento passed Assembly Bill 1825, which would prohibit public libraries from banning books because of their treatment of topics such as gender or sexual identity. The bill is on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.
Staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.
