Imperfect Paradise: The Huntington Beach library at the center of America’s culture wars

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LAist Studios

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4.5 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 September 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

Censorship efforts at libraries nationwide has increased steadily over the last several years. In the 2023 - 24 school year, more than 10,000 book bans were counted in the country’s public schools. These efforts have become a cornerstone of a larger national debate over cultural influences and parents' rights to restrict those influences. LAist Orange County Correspondent Jill Replogle joins us to talk about how censorship efforts are playing out at the Huntington Beach library. We look at how the town’s conservative city council and residents are facing off over the council’s efforts to exert greater control over the library and how the choice to remove a few books from a library shelf can have far-reaching effects.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Gob Jebron, food and culture writer at LAIS.
0:02.8	Join me for Cookbook Live, our event series with the James Beard Foundation.
0:06.6	On Thursday, September 18th, chef KianuMoju will demo a recipe from her debut cookbook, Afriqali.
0:12.4	Tickets at lais.com slash events.
0:15.3	Hi, this is Larry Mantle.
0:16.6	This year marks the 40th anniversary of my program air talk.
0:20.5	On the show, we've discussed the biggest topics and events of the day from earthquakes to elections.
0:25.7	Please join me for the biggest conversation in Southern California for 40 years.
0:30.8	This is in Perfect Paradise.
0:32.7	I'm Antonio Zedekido.
0:43.8	1984 by George Orwell, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
0:50.2	These three books are all literary classics. But they all also have something else in common. All three books, often top banned book lists around the country with reasons like racism or offensive language or sexuality.
0:59.0	Censorship at libraries has increased steadily over the last several years.
1:04.0	In the 2023-24 school year, more than 10,000 book bans were counted in public schools nationwide. The efforts to censor books are not
1:13.1	always about the books themselves. It has come to represent something more, like a way to exert
1:18.2	greater political control over culture and the kinds of ideas people are exposed to.
1:24.6	And it's also become a cornerstone of a larger national movement towards censorship.
1:30.6	This is exactly what's playing out in Huntington Beach, a small conservative California town
1:36.3	where the city council and residents have faced off over the council's push to have greater
1:41.0	control over the kinds of books that library patrons have access to.
1:47.4	Today on Imperfect Paradise, I'm talking to LAist Orange County correspondent Jill Replagall
1:52.3	about the soft censorship that can have long-term effects on a community, well beyond just one book.
	...

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