Amanda Jones is a badass.

She’s not on stage in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans like Beyoncé. She didn’t eliminate the national debt. I don’t think she jumps out of planes. 

Still, she’s a badass, but not just because the teenage friends of her teenage daughter said, “Your mom is a badass,” which is a major life accomplishment, as anyone with teens knows. 

Amanda Jones is a badass because she’s holding down the fort while the fort is under attack. She advocates for social justice and the democratic right to exchange ideas and information. Even though she has endured intense hate campaigns for defending basic principles of freedom, she stands tall and persists.

Jones is a librarian from southern Louisiana who delivered an anti-censorship speech at a hometown public hearing in 2022. In it, she expressed understanding of book censors’ concerns about age-appropriateness in book content for children. But she went on to say that the books being challenged in her parish disproportionately affect marginalized populations, adding, “All members of our community deserve to be seen.”

She spoke of the effect of stigmatization on vulnerable populations, such as LGBTQ+ youth, and described the importance of positive images and diverse representation. Naturally, she was labeled a groomer for pedophiles and made the target of vicious silencing efforts. Local and national “haters,” as she calls pro-censorship activists, accused her of promoting pornography to kids. Then they waged a smear war against her consisting of thinly veiled threats and lie after lie after lie. 

Instead of caving, like many would, Jones filed a defamation lawsuit and continued her leadership in Louisiana’s anti-censorship movement. She also wrote the captivating memoir/expose/manifesto That Librarian. But it hasn’t been easy to be in the crosshairs of irrational but mobilized haters.

In case we aren’t tuned in to what it might feel like to be in those crosshairs, Jones brings us up to speed right away. She opens her 288-page recollection with this death threat, which she received after her well-reasoned speech at that public hearing:

“Amanda, you are indoctrinating our children with perversion + pedophile grooming. Your evil agenda is getting print and national coverage. Congrats. Continue with your LGBT agenda on our children cause we gonna put ur fat evil commie PEDO azz in the dirt very soon bitch. You can’t hide. We know where you work and live…you have a LARGE target on your back. Click. Click…see you soon.”

All Jones did and continues to do is advocate for intellectual freedom and insist that libraries are for everyone. However, the far Right doesn’t often trouble itself with reading the books it wants to ban, with telling the truth about where those books are shelved, or with studying whether such books actually do the damage they claim. Rather, it puts its energy into what can only be called terror campaigns against Jones and people like her. In true librarian form, though, Jones kept a detailed record. 

The book is loaded with memes and tweets and emails, as well as with legal proceedings and twists. She turns over all the rocks and shows us the messy, ugly, squiggly, disgusting things underneath: the words and deeds of people with no “moral compass” but plenty of “fear, hate, and intolerance.” She reveals, for instance, one legislator’s end-game of replacing all public libraries with fundamentalist Christian ones. 

As she exposes the haters through their own words, she also tells a compelling story. Jones shows us who she became under fire and how her comparative naivete about the haters evolved into critical consciousness and a very effective form of activism. With humor and wit and a sort of astonishment that gives way to justified rage, Jones humanizes the harrowing stats about book-banning and refocuses readers on how much censorship hurts. Her anecdotes about the young LGBTQ+ and BIPOC learners in particular put a human face on the growing dilemma.

Jones is an obvious advocate for all children, a lover of books, and a dedicated professional. She is also a skilled rhetorical analyst and a disgusted Christian. She lays bare the lies, exposes the cherry-picking, re-words the euphemisms, and calls out the labeling fallacies and mischaracterizations that form her detractors’ arsenal. She also reserves space at the end of her narrative to call the haters out on their wildly hypocritical religiosity and misuse of the term “Christian.” In what may be my favorite part of this lovable book, Jones writes:

“There’s a saying that goes, ‘there’s no hate like Chrisian love.’ As a Christian myself, I really can’t stand that quote, but there’s truth in it when you see the venom people spew in the name of God. They wonder why more and more people are leaving church, but they’d see why if they just took a look at themselves and how they behave.”

That Librarian is a revelation. But it’s more than an exposé about hate and its effects on principled people. It’s also a gripping memoir from what writing scholar Neisha-Anne Green calls an “accomplice,” an active advocate for minoritized groups (as opposed to the more passive “ally”). As an accomplice, Jones’ brand of supporting marginalized youth never devolves into sappy or condescending advocacy. Her activism is self-aware and ever-evolving. Her learning process is part of her narrative, and her willingness to take what’s dished out and keep fighting serves as a humbling call to action.

Being an accomplice in the liberation of oppressed people means getting one’s hands dirty. Jones does this, reporting the anti-censorship movement’s activities with humility, raw vulnerability, and continued focus on the real target of the hate: mostly LGBTQ+ youth in her parish. Along the way, the reader can see what a badass she is and what cowards her detractors and the silent bystanders are.

In Amanda Jones, the American public has a bold truth-teller who has given us something important in That Librarian. Other activists in the movement against censorship will find it rich with the type of storytelling that adds humanity to the data. Readers unsure about the nature and venom of anti-library attacks should hold it close. Those who favor censorship won’t read it, of course. They’d be ashamed of themselves if they did.

Sarah Trembath is an Eagles fan from the suburbs of Philadelphia who currently lives in Baltimore with her family. She holds a master’s degree in African American literature and a doctorate in Education Policy and Leadership. She is also a writer on faculty at American University. She reviews books for the Independent, has written extensively for other publications, and, in 2019, was the recipient of the American Studies Association’s Gloria Anzaldúa Award for independent scholars for her social-justice writing and teaching. Her collection of essays is currently in press at Lazuli Literary Group.

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