A Refuge From Censorship: Why Independent Bookstores Will Save Us

I was six hundred miles into a two-thousand-mile road trip, doing jumping jacks at a rest stop in Ohio to wake myself up, when my phone buzzed with the update I’d been dreading. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had issued its ruling in Little vs. Llano County. In a 10-7 decision, the court decided that public libraries, including school libraries, are no longer protected under First Amendment free speech guarantees. 

Americans have historically used First Amendment rights to challenge the removal of books from library collections, arguing that patrons have a right to receive information via public libraries. But the Fifth Circuit broke precedent by declaring that this right doesn’t apply to taxpayer funded libraries. In a sixty-page majority opinion, Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan argued that when public libraries decide which books to collect or remove, they’re engaging in government speech—which isn’t subject to free speech rules. Duncan used to manage the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and successfully argued the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case that limited contraceptive access under the Affordable Care Act. Guess which president appointed him.

What does it mean to overturn forty-plus years of established anti-censorship law? For one thing, partisan government bureaucrats—not trained librarians—can now determine what you find in library collections. Some politician or unelected official who might not have read a book since high school can now declare books controversial or un-American and remove them, legally, as long as he calls it “curation.” 

I was reminded that I’m part of a community that transcends geography and countless divisions—a community of people who read.

The First Amendment doesn’t mandate that booksellers sell books they find objectionable. It doesn’t mean a store has to stock a book it doesn’t want on its shelves. But it does mean that the government (at least for now) can’t tell bookstores what to sell, or prohibit them from selling books the government finds objectionable. While customers don’t have a right to receive information from a store the way they used to have a right to receive information from a library, the government also can’t interfere with private businesses in the same way it can with taxpayer-funded institutions. Even Duncan, in a bizarrely flippant tone critiquing what he declared “the unusually over-caffeinated arguments made in this case” (huh?), wrote: “Take a deep breath, everyone. No one is banning (or burning) books. If a disappointed patron can’t find a book in the library, he can order it online, buy it from a bookstore, or borrow it from a friend.”

This reasoning overlooks a critical fact: bookstores aren’t free public resources designed to be accessible to all. Libraries uniquely guarantee free access to knowledge without financial barriers. “We’re not banning books, just making them harder and more expensive to access” is quite an argument to make with a straight face. 

And yet, Duncan is right: we do have bookstores. They aren’t a replacement for public libraries, but their role is just as essential. Bookstores function as what sociologist Ray Oldenburg famously termed “third places”: locations outside of home and work where people can gather and connect. The bookstore isn’t just a place to buy books, although that’s of course part of it. It’s also a place to meet others, foster conversation, and strengthen neighborhood ties. 

I’d embarked on this road trip from my home in the Bronx to Boulder, Colorado, in order to dog sit for a month and start writing a new book. And I’d decided to drive specifically so that I could deepen my own connections and stop at as many independent bookstores as possible along the way. The release day for my debut novel, Greenwich, was fast approaching, and I wanted to meet booksellers and check out stores I’d never been to. Whenever I walk into a bookstore, my first stop is always to browse the staff picks—I’ll always prefer to explore an actual person’s reading tastes over what an algorithm tells me. I hoped booksellers would be just as eager to meet me and want to share my book with readers when it’s out. 

On my trip to Colorado, I drove through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, and Kansas. On the way back, I plan to take a northern route through Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, before finishing the final leg back through Ohio and Pennsylvania again. Overall, I’ll spend close to four weeks on the road, visiting more than thirty stores over four thousand miles and making it back to New York in time to attend my launch event for Greenwich (at an independent bookstore, of course). 

The stores I’ve stopped in are all different, with their own stock and their own personalities. There are stores on tree-lined streets, and in urban centers, strip malls, old homes, and refurbished warehouses. Once, I pulled into a dirt parking area convinced I was lost, until I saw a bright awning confirming there was indeed a bookstore there. Yet no matter where I went or how far from home I traveled, I felt welcomed every time I stepped inside. I was reminded that I’m part of a community that transcends geography and countless divisions—a community of people who read. Regardless of our favorite books or chosen genres, we believe in the value of language, creativity, and communication. 

At Bookery Cincy in Ohio, Sierra told me about an annual bookstore crawl across the city, and how what had started with just a few stores now has two dozen places participating. At Joy and Matt’s, also in Cincinnati, Joy and I swapped book recs (she told me to read Amor Towles, I said I couldn’t stop thinking about The Safekeep). At The Novel Neighbor in Webster Grove, Missouri, I discussed with three booksellers who should read Greenwich first, based on the shelves of staff picks (shout out to Haley—I hope the ARC got to you!). I talked horror with Stevie at Foxing in Louisville, and Liz Moore with Jessica at Subterranean Books in St. Louis.

At Skylark in Columbia, Missouri, I got to tell Matthew behind the register that my editor grew up nearby, and then check out her favorite childhood ice cream spot, Sparky’s. (It was eleven AM, raining, and sixty degrees, and no that didn’t stop me. Get the mango if you’re in town.) At Rainy Day Books in Fairway, Kansas, I felt the bookseller’s excitement when I said I was publishing my first novel. “You’re a real author!” Tom at Trident exclaimed once I’d made it to Boulder. Over and over, I had the thrill of hearing that my book was already in stock at some stores, and the excitement of introducing it to others. I took home notecards, T-shirts, novelty socks. I bought a lot of books. When I asked a pink-haired bookseller at Left Bank Books in St. Louis how long the store had been around, they proudly said it had been founded in 1969 by “hippies and queers,” and that today the store is keeping up the legacy. That’s what I kept thinking about after every mile and every new stop. This fight for free speech isn’t new, and independent bookstores have been fighting it for a long time. 

Supporting independent bookstores isn’t just about personal consumer choice—it’s civic engagement.

Capitalism isn’t going to save us. But supporting independent bookstores isn’t just about personal consumer choice—it’s civic engagement. For every book that’s banned, and every library that loses its autonomy over curation, we’re going to need community action and mutual aid to get books into readers’ hands. Buy books from indie stores, gift books to those who can’t access them, show up at local meetings, and speak against censorship. None of us can afford to look away, even if it isn’t our library, our county, or our book that’s on the chopping block. 

The Fifth Circuit has made its decision, but that doesn’t make it settled law. It’s likely the case will create a circuit split, in which other courts of appeals will reach a different decision in similar cases such that federal law is applied inconsistently across states. If that happens, the case will probably go to the Supreme Court—and while I’m not naive about the possible outcome, I’m also not going to declare defeat before something has even happened yet. 

Even if the decision does hold, it only means our libraries will be as good as our governments. We can still vote out the bozos afraid of books and elect people in our municipalities who share our belief that the free exchange of ideas is essential for democracy.

My trip is only half-over, and as I prepare to begin my long drive home, through cities and towns I’ve never been to, getting to know stores I might never otherwise have an opportunity to visit, I feel just a little bit better knowing there’s a thriving world of independent bookstores across the country, and that booksellers, librarians, authors, and readers are building deep and varied coalitions. When the next troubling headline hits, at least I’ll know where to go: another bookstore, another community, and another conversation.

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Greenwich by Kate Broad is available from St. Martin’s Press, a division of Macmillan.