In March 2020, our library was planning to host the third annual Teen Lit Mob event for teen readers from around Vermont. Many of our featured authors were BIPOC authors, including our keynote speaker, Ibi Zoboi. Due to the coronavirus, we had to cancel this event but in one of the last acts before the library's budget froze, I reached out to Zoboi and was able to schedule a Zoom presentation, for students involved in Teen Lit Mob and for students in an AP World Authors unit I was co-teaching. In our second year of disrupting the canon,we have taught Ibi Zoboi's book Pride, a remix of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Pride takes place in Bushwick, Brooklyn and centers the story of Zuri Benetiez, a Haitian-Dominican young woman. With students, we co-create learning opportunities that explore African-American Vernacular English, gentrification, the African diaspora, redlining, food deserts/apartheids, and other themes that are simply not present in Austen's work, much less in other lessons offered to them in our high school curriculum.

Additionally, we've disrupted the usual summative assessment for this unit. Instead of a formal essay paper, we've asked students to write spoken word poetry, as Zuri is a spoken word poet. We explore this format as a disruption to traditional poetry presented in the anthologies these students encounter as AP students. We see some of them squirm in this unfamiliar format, yet others thrive in finding their voices and a platform that speaks to them. We do this writing after lots of identity work and the results are profound. The students come to be an inclusive authentic audience for one another—some after peeling off layers of discomfort and white privilege, others after seeing their identities affirmed in texts centered in an AP classroom—and engage in some of the most authentic and vulnerable learning of their schooling.

Co-Creating Equitable Libraries with Authentic Audiences

In "Speaking Up for Equity Takes Courage—But the Standards Have Your Back," Kate Lechtenberg and Jeanie Phillips ask, "in today's politically charged climate, school librarians may feel vulnerable when we raise questions about equity, inclusion, and social justice. On the other hand, we cannot and should not avoid this fundamental question: Who does my school library serve?" School librarians need to do more than create diverse bulletin boards and displays. The AASL Standards "challenge us to embrace the systemic value of diversity as we work to remedy structural barriers to equity."

Up until March 2020, more students were checking out books. Is it because the book displays and promotions go beyond mere thematic displays, to touch upon their identities and raise up marginalized voices? I like to think it helps. This year, we created real and virtual displays on for Black Lives Matter, Women's History Month, transgender awareness, pride, indigenious peoples, and antiracism. More students are rediscovering that our library is a place for them just as they are, fully actualized and whole. In the liberatory library of my dreams, all students will want to be in the library because they see themselves reflected in the books and programs, in the knowledge that is curated, in the behaviors deemed acceptable, and in equitable and inclusive policies and practices. They will be able to check out automotive manuals alongside Shakespearean analysis, find authors of color alongside problematic texts, with space to explore where the tensions lie, what they think, who they are, who they wish to become, and to reimagine futures for themselves where they are included, where they are free.

Some librarians are reevaluating their practice of billing for library materials. Ashley Krohn (@teachingmissk), head of library services for the Minneapolis Public Schools shared on Twitter that in response to the pandemic "we've waived all lost/damaged fines for library books (never charged overdues) and increased the number of books per student" (February 21, 2021). This bold move takes into account the lived experiences of our students and inequities exacerbated by the pandemic. While it is incumbent upon us to teach responsibility for borrowed materials, I fear we are turning away students and families from ever using libraries again, and worse, are in danger of losing trust in us as an institution where life-long learning is a sacred tenet. I would rather lose a book than a reader, but unless the eradication of punitive measures attached to library materials is made manifest, it will be very difficult to earn the trust of our readers and students who are on the receiving end of fines and bills.

Full Circle

I'd like to return to the story I briefly touched upon about the banning of the Confederate flag at my school (Allison and Langella 2021), which started when a picture of the flag flying out of a school bus in front of our school was taken on the day the Black Lives Matter flag was to be raised.

I learned that this incident involved a student I had met in an English class his senior year. I was asked to collaborate in designing engaging lessons for students needing support writing resumes, cover letters, and applying for jobs. This class had students who struggled with functional literacy, but could think and express themselves verbally and were quite talented in the trades they were studying—plumbing, building trades, electrical work. I worked very closely with this class over the course of many weeks, and the work we did together on his cover letter and resume helped him land a job with a local electrician to begin a month after he graduated.

I asked him, how is it that you are a senior and I've never met you before? He shared that when he was in the 8th grade, he took out a library book and lost it. He had received an overdue notice that turned into a bill, which his family did not have the means to pay. So, he never came back.

I kept thinking, what a loss. For all those lost years of his schooling without a library book to read, a magazine to thumb though, support for research. At the time, the library was an active site for student and faculty-led dialogues about the Confederate flag, free speech, and systemic racism. What a loss to not have the opportunity to invite his voice into our community dialogues, to share his thoughts and to listen to others.

Three weeks later, after he shared this with me, he came to school, waving a Confederate flag out the back of his school bus.

Closing

Building inclusive libraries is the essential ingredient for germinating inclusive authentic audiences. Students can be that authentic audience for one another once they are freed from constraints that keep them boxed into stereotypes and roles that are dominated by assessments and scoring and the positional power dynamics between teacher and student, and between peers. Librarians have to think of ways to build trust, especially with historically marginalized students, and to understand how to build opportunities that do not create more trauma but become bridges to radical inclusion and civil dialogues. This is the exact site in which to unpack and explore policies and practices at the heart of schools and learning environments that are problematic and inequitable. If we tap into these intersections, we can bolster community-led solutions toward becoming anti-bias and anti-racist libraries and schools, led by listening to student voices that are the authentic audiences we seek to engineer, but have already taken root. Given the right conditions, an inclusive authentic audience can grow and flourish in your school library and community, too.