Black Women Are Spearheading The Fight Against Book Bans
Kamuri Spears — Underground Books
Kamuri Spears — Underground Books
As a manager at Underground Books in Sacramento, California, Spears recently used her voice to speak about book bans from a bookseller’s perspective.
In an October 2023 piece for the Sacramento Bee, Spears emphasized that many of the books frequently featured on banned book lists are “foundational” reading — such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Native Son by Richard Wright.
“We tell people, these are the books you’ll want to read because they don’t want you to read them,” Spears noted.
“The list [of banned books] is growing every day. That’s scary,” Spears added. “This is our real life. We can’t make this stuff up. This bars people who are pouring their hearts into their stories and their truth. If we don’t stop fighting, we’ll never be able to see those books.”
