The Librarian Who Fought Christian Nationalist Book Bans and Won

Straight White American Jesus

Axis Mundi Media: Bradley Onishi + Daniel Miller

News, Politics

4.7 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 November 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One of the things small town librarian Amanda Jones values most about books is how they can affirm a young person's sense of self. So in 2022, when she caught wind of a local public hearing that would discuss “book content,” she knew what was at stake. Schools and libraries nationwide have been bombarded by demands for books with LGTBQ+ references, discussions of racism, and more to be purged from the shelves. Amanda would be damned if her community were to ban stories representing minority groups. She spoke out that night at the meeting. Days later, she woke up to a nightmare that is still ongoing. Amanda Jones has been called a groomer, a pedo, and a porn-pusher; she has faced death threats and attacks from strangers and friends alike. Her decision to support a collection of books with diverse perspectives made her a target for extremists using book banning campaigns-funded by dark money organizations and advanced by hard right politicians-in a crusade to make America more white, straight, and "Christian." But Amanda Jones wouldn't give up without a fight: she sued her harassers for defamation and urged others to join her in the resistance. The discussion delves into Amanda's story of growing up in Watson, Louisiana, her passion for literature and libraries, and the extreme harassment she faced after speaking out against book banning efforts in 2022. Amanda shares her journey, including filing a defamation lawsuit, the community's reaction, and the broader implications of book banning as a political tool. They also discuss practical steps for combatting censorship and supporting libraries.https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/that-librarian-9781639733545/ Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus content most Mondays, bonus episodes every month, ad-free listening, access to the entire 850-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC Order Brad's book: https://bookshop.org/a/95982/9781506482163 Subscribe to Teología Sin Vergüenza Subscribe to American Exceptionalism Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Axis Mundy
0:07.0	Axis Moondy Welcome to straight white American Jesus. I'm Brad Onishi, author preparing for war,
0:33.6	the extremist history of white Christian nationalism and what comes next, founder of
0:36.6	access media, and just so excited to be with you this Monday, as I am every Monday, but today I get to speak to Amanda Jones, author of That Librarian, The Fight Against Book Banning in America. So Amanda, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. I am excited to talk to you for so many reasons. The book you've written is great,
0:55.3	and I think it's going to provide folks who don't know about it. I'm sure many people listening
0:58.7	already know about it, but folks with some just great insight into what's happening in our libraries
1:04.2	and our schools, why the book banning stuff continues to pop up and what they can do to fight back.
1:09.8	I think that's our goal. Let's start here.
1:12.5	I love your story. And I was just telling you that off air. I love everything about your
1:16.5	biography. You grew up in a small town. You spent most of your years in that small town.
1:21.9	You live next door to your parents. Like, explain yourself, Amanda Jones. Like, tell us about your
1:26.5	story here. I do live next to my parents. So I grew up in this very small town called Watson, Louisiana,
1:32.5	and we have two red lights. I work at the middle school that I attended as a child, and I've worked here for 25 years.
1:40.2	And I now have multiple grand students, which are students of kids that I taught. Some of them
1:47.3	I've taught both parents. So I think I'm at like 50 or 60 grand students this year. But I've lived here
1:52.1	my entire life and, you know, small town Louisiana that we were raised in this town, Southern
1:58.0	Baptist, you know, most people in my town were Southern Baptist growing up,
2:02.1	and Southern Baptist and Republican. And so I was raised pretty much the same way everybody else in
2:07.2	my town was raised. And here we are. I'm 47 now. What made you want to be a librarian? You're the
2:14.7	librarian at the middle school you went to. What made you
2:17.7	want to work in a library? I just, I love to read. I wanted to be around books. I did teach
2:23.2	English language arts for 14 years in the classroom. And I just, I just think sometimes you have a
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