Borrowed & Returned

Art Spiegelman is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the graphic novel Maus, the story of his parents’ experience during the Holocaust. We got to sit down with Spiegelman at Brooklyn Public Library’s recording studio earlier this month to talk about Maus almost forty years after it first came out, about censorship, about the war in Gaza, and about what it means to stand up for others.

You can read a transcript of this episode on our website, and check out these further resources:

• Check out our booklist with books recommended by Art Spiegelman, and more.
• Art Spiegelman’s comic collaboration with Joe Sacco was published in The New York Review of Books earlier this year. You can check out Sacco’s Palestine and his more recent War on Gaza from the library.
• Watch Art Spiegelman discuss MetaMaus with Dan Nadel at Brooklyn Public Library.

Art Spiegelman’s Maus almost single-handedly elevated comics from throw-away inserts in newspapers to a serious literary art worthy of winning the highest award in book publishing. But it’s not an accident that this book is coming back to us now. Maus was swept once again into the public eye three years ago, when the conservative movement to target marginalized stories took aim at the beloved graphic novel. In this episode, we examine how comic book censorship in the 1950s led to the creation of Maus, and eventually shifted the way we tell stories about resistance, memory, and authoritarianism.

You can read a transcript of this episode on our website. Further resources:

• Check out our booklist with books recommended by Art Spiegelman, and more.
• Read Amy Kurzweil’s Flying Couch and Molly Crabapple’s Drawing Blood. You can read more about both of them on their websites.
• Art Spiegelman’s comic collaboration with Joe Sacco was published in The New York Review of Books earlier this year. You can check out Sacco’s Palestine and his more recent War on Gaza from the library.
• Learn more about the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and the history of comic book censorship.
• Listen to our interviews with Maia Kobabe, author of Gender Queer, and Mike Curato, author of Flamer from our previous series, Borrowed and Banned.
• Watch Art Spiegelman discuss MetaMaus with Dan Nadel at Brooklyn Public Library.

This episode comes to us from our friends at Book Riot! In this segment, you'll hear Book Riot’s Erica Ezeifedi speak with Rodney Freeman, a librarian and producer of the forthcoming documentary, Are You a Librarian? The Untold Story of Black Librarians. This is part of their Reading and Resistance series, which looks at the relationship between reading and the pursuit of freedom in America. 

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Matt de la Peña is the Newbery Medal-winning author of seven Young Adult novels and five picture books. We talked with him about writing small stories and what it means to write a book that is, as he calls it, “Diversity 2.0.”

You can read a transcript of this episode on our website.

• Check out our booklist with books by Matt de la Peña and more!
• Learn more about de la Peña on his website, and see more illustrations by Christian Robinson.
• Protect the freedom to read by getting involved with Books Unbanned.

Meg Medina is an award-winning author of books for kids and young adults, and she was the 2023-2024 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. We talked to her about what it meant to be the first Latinx author in that role, about the need for more diverse kids books, and the importance of reading in families.

You can read a transcript of this episode on our website.

• Check out our booklist with books by Meg Medina and more!
• Learn more about the We Need Diverse Books movement. 
• Read about the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature at the Library of Congress.

The Snowy Day wasn’t the first picture book to feature a Black child as its beloved protagonist, but it might be the most visible. When it came out in 1962, it challenged the publishing industry to champion books that depict kids of color. Today, we find ourselves in a moment not so different from the one Ezra Jack Keats was in when he sat down to create The Snowy Day. We are, once again, fighting for the right to let kids read the books they love, and we’re still reminding each other that the characters kids see in those books really matters. 

Read a transcript of this episode on our website and check out these great links:

• Check out our booklist with titles related to The Snowy Day
• Learn more about the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, the EJK Award, and the yearly bookmaking competition for kids in NYC public schools.
• Check out these digitized copies of The Brownies’ Book, books by Black creators
• Read about diversity in children’s book publishing, from “The All-White World of Children’s Books” (1965) to more recent history, like this 2018 graphic that compiles data from the Cooperative Children’s Book Center.
• Learn more about the most frequently banned children’s books in schools (PEN America) and, as always, check out our Books Unbanned initiative for ways you can help.
• Attend an in-person event with Art Spiegelman at BPL’s Central Library on September 10th. 

When Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States came out in 1980, it literally rocked the boat. Instead of starting where most histories of the Americas start — on the deck of Columbus’s ship as it approached land — Howard Zinn flipped the script, focusing instead on what the people standing on the shore would have seen. In this episode, we look at the ripple effects of Zinn’s radical take on history. 

You can read a transcript of this episode on our web page.

• Check out our booklist with titles related to A People’s History of the United States.
• You can find Nick Witham’s book Popularizing the Past at the University of Chicago Press.
• Learn more about the ReVisioning History series from Beacon Press.
• Read more about Howard Zinn, and visit the Zinn Education Project for tons of resources for teachers and students.
• History books are one of the subject areas targeted for censorship right now. Learn what you can do to help by visiting our Books Unbanned homepage, or listening to Borrowed and Banned, our previous series about the state of book banning in America.

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, a lawyer, and the founder and CEO of Freedom Reads, an organization with the goal of bringing a library to every cell block in America. We talked with him about what he read – and wrote – while he was incarcerated, and what it taught him about what it means to be free, to be loved, and to be part of a community.

Read a transcript of this episode on our website, and find books by Betts in our library catalog.

There are so many reasons to read – and reread – The Autobiography of Malcolm X. But for this episode, we’re revisiting the book with the perspectives of readers who are, or were, incarcerated. Malcolm X’s story isn’t just radical for its narrative of change and self-improvement; it also encourages readers to think more critically about the prison system itself. 

You can read a transcript of this episode on our website.

• Check out our booklist with titles related to The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
• Learn more about the work that BPL’s Justice Initiatives does for patrons who are incarcerated. You can donate recently-published paperback books to the jail and prison collections at Williamsburgh Library or Central Library only during drop-off times. Please contact librarian Claire Mooney (cmooney [at] bklynlibrary [dot] org) for guidance on what to donate, and when.
• Learn about Reginald Dwayne Betts’s Freedom Libraries
• Watch Inside Story, a video series produced by BPL’s Donald Washington and others who are formerly-incarcerated.
• Read about censorship in prison libraries and other radical ways to read with Book Riot’s Reading and Resistance series.

N.K. Jemisin is a New York Times-bestselling science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s a Brooklynite, the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, and the first author to win three Best Novel Hugos in a row. We talked to her about Octavia Butler’s influence on her writing, and how she processes the present moment in her own fiction.

You can read a transcript of this episode on our website, and check out our booklist with titles from Octavia Butler, N.K. Jemisin, and more!