Deep Reads: The librarian who couldn’t take it anymore
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2023
⏱️ 19 minutes
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Summary
Tania Galiñanes had planned to spend the rest of her career in the Osceola County School District. She was 51. She could have stayed for years at Tohopekaliga, a school she loved that had only just opened in 2018.
That was before the school board meeting on April 5, 2022, when Tania watched parents read aloud from books they described as a danger to kids. It was before she received a phone call from the district, the day after that, instructing her to remove four books from her shelves. It was before a member of the conservative group Moms for Liberty told her on Facebook, a few days later, that she shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near students. It had been 18 months since then.
Tania still showed up every weekday at 7 a.m. and tried to focus on the job she had signed up for, which was, she thought, to help students discover a book to love. But she could feel something shifting.
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This story is part of a new collection of occasional bonus episodes you’ll be hearing from “Post Reports.” We’re calling these stories “Deep Reads,” and they’re part of The Post’s commitment to immersive and narrative journalism.
Today’s story was written and read by national political enterprise reporter Ruby Cramer.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Ruby Kramer, a National Political Enterprise reporter for the Washington Post, and I'm bringing you the next story in a new weekend offering from Post Reports. |
| 0:09.0 | We're calling these stories deep reads, and they're a collection of reporting and storytelling |
| 0:13.6 | that showcase the post commitment to narrative journalism. I wrote today's story |
| 0:18.0 | about one librarians move to quit in the wake of bookbands in Florida's public |
| 0:22.2 | schools. |
| 0:23.2 | I've been following the new education laws in Florida |
| 0:26.0 | that have restricted the books that public school |
| 0:29.9 | students can and cannot read. |
| 0:32.3 | And what I wanted to know was how these new laws |
| 0:34.8 | were changing the job of being a librarian. |
| 0:37.3 | I searched for a while for a librarian |
| 0:39.2 | who would be willing to speak out |
| 0:41.1 | about what the job is like now. |
| 0:43.3 | And I eventually found Tanya Gollignanes |
| 0:46.2 | in Osceola County, which is in Central Florida. |
| 0:49.3 | She was fed up with the new laws, and she felt that as a result of the laws she was acting more as a |
| 0:54.5 | censor than a librarian and spending most of her time reviewing her own |
| 0:58.0 | collection to see if the books in the library were in violation of Florida |
| 1:02.3 | statute. I hope readers of this story |
| 1:04.4 | will have a better understanding of what a library is now and what happens to a |
| 1:09.3 | library when laws come into play and I hope Tanya's story will do a good job of that. |
| 1:17.6 | It was her last Monday morning in the library, and when Tanya Galanyanis walked into her office |
... |
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