Inspiring Events at the SFPL

The San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) hosts a multitude of free author events which afford multiple perspectives about modern life and provide opportunities to interact with a wide range of ideas. Because events occur at library branches throughout the city and are free of charge and open to the public, all San Franciscans can become engaged in literature, politics and culture by attending. For example, an author event featuring Maggie Tokuda-Hall provided deep insights into censorship in the United States.

The event took place on September 13th, at the Koret Auditorium at the Main Library, and debuted to an audience of around 30 people. The program began with Tokuda-Hall reading from her newest picture book Love in the Library and then addressing controversy that surrounds it.

Her children’s book, Love in the Library, is about how her grandparents met in the Minidoka internment camp, one of several sites where Japanese-Americans were incarcerated during World War II. This topic is highly relevant because many formerly incarcerated Japanese-Americans and their descendants live in California. In her talk, Tokuda-Hall shared her family’s experiences and, in the course of publishing the book, her challenges with censorship.

The book was picked up by Scholastic Inc., a publishing company that holds book fairs in schools across the U.S. In order for it to be approved for distribution, Scholastic requested that the word ‘racism’ be removed from the author’s note. Tokuda-Hall publicly refused to change her words, which described the Japanese-American imprisonment in the larger context of racism in America. “I still do not understand how you could possibly have a discussion about Japanese incarceration in the United States without using the word racism,” she said.

Scholastic ultimately offered to retain her original text, but Tokuda-Hall still refused to work with them. “I stood in for a lot of other people who aren’t usually given a chance to kick up a fuss. And I would be really remiss in that responsibility if I accepted a half-baked and medium effort solution to these events,” she said.

Tokuda-Hall’s decision received massive public support, far more than she was expecting. Love in the Library is also banned in some parts of the country. When asked if this was too difficult a topic for children to handle, Tokuda-Hall responded with, “Sheltering kids is not a good long-term plan. Even if it is successful, sheltering children from everything that is upsetting in the world will only lead to them feeling like we were lying to them.”

An attendee at the event, Marcia Omachi, reflected on the significance of the event.  “I think these events are important because they provide insight into the struggles that many authors face when trying to tell their stories and how many have to compromise their values to be given the chance to succeed,” she said.

SFPL’s free events occur across many locations in the city, as well as online, and cater to a wide variety of interests. These events are critical to the library’s stated mission of dedication to “free and equal access to information, knowledge, independent learning and the joys of reading for our diverse community.”

In the next few weeks, several notable author events are scheduled to take place at the library. Cleve Jones, a human rights activist who has worked for queer rights since the 1970s, will read from his memoir and discuss his past and current activism with the CEO of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. New York Times best-selling author and poet, Javier Zamora, will share from his nonfiction account of his journey from El Salvador to the U.S. as an unaccompanied child. Zamora will also discuss the organization he founded, Undocupoets, to fight citizenship-based discrimination in publishing.

The main library is also hosting a panel of Bay Area writers entitled “A Sense of Place– Bay Area in Fiction and Poetry.” Four authors with varying backgrounds (Beverly Parayno, Toni Mirosevich, Norman Zelaya, and Josiah Luis Alderete) will present poetry and fiction situated in the Bay Area. These are just a few of the live offerings across different libraries in San Francisco.

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Nikaash Omachi

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