Portside

One Sunday morning two years ago, Amanda Jones, a middle school librarian in Watson, La., woke up and saw an email on her phone that left her shaking and breathless.

The expletive-laced message from a stranger accused her of being a pedophile and a groomer, and concluded with a threat: “You can’t hide. We know where you work + live. You have a LARGE target on your back,” it said. “Click … Click … see you soon!”

It was part of a deluge of online threats and harassment that Jones has faced since the summer of 2022, when she was one of around 20 people to speak out against book banning during a July meeting at her local public library.

A fight broke out over whether the library should remove books with content that some deemed inappropriate for children. Like many librarians across the country, Jones found herself caught in a vicious battle over which books belong in libraries — a debate that has divided communities and school boards as book bans have surged in the United States.

But the attacks on Jones have been particularly intense, and unrelenting, because of her response: She fought back.

After commenters on social media accused her of seeking to sexualize children, Jones filed a defamation lawsuit against two men and the organization Citizens for a New Louisiana, a group that has pushed to have books that they consider erotic or sexual removed from the children’s section of libraries. She co-founded Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship, which lobbies against legislation that would place new restrictions on libraries. And she’s highlighting the threat of censorship and the pressure that librarians face in a memoir, “That Librarian,” which Bloomsbury published last month.

“Before all this, I was just a school librarian, but they wanted to silence me, so I thought I would do the exact opposite and become an activist,” Jones said during a phone interview. “What we’re seeing now is full-scale attacks on people’s characters if they stand up for books. The hate level and the vitriol is unreal to me.”

As books about L.G.B.T.Q. issues, sexual health and race and racism have been targeted for removal, libraries have become a new battleground in a bitter culture war. Sweeping laws that impose restrictions on library content have been passed in more than a dozen states. Librarians — who are trained to curate collections that reflect a range of political views and subjects — have quit their jobs after being harassed for opposing book bans, or have been fired after refusing to remove books. Some have been reported to the police by community members who accuse them of peddling pornography.

“We’re seeing increasing attacks on librarians and libraries, ranging from character assassination and the use of social media to inflame and intimidate, right up to bomb threats,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

A handful of librarians, like Jones, have turned to the courts to clear their names.

In 2023, a librarian at a New Jersey high school, Roxana Caivano, brought a defamation suit against a group of parents who had disparaged her online and at a school board meeting, in some instances calling her a pornographer and child predator because she stocked the graphic memoir “Gender Queer.” Caivano, who is represented in the case by her husband, had argued for keeping the book on the shelves.

In the fall, the former director of the Campbell County Public Library in Wyoming, who was fired after she refused to remove disputed books from the children’s and young adult section of the library in Gillette, Wyo., filed a federal lawsuit for defamation and the violation of her civil rights. The librarian, Terri Lesley, filed the suit against three community members who accused her of providing obscene material to children, and had reported her to the county sheriff’s office in an attempt to have her arrested.

And earlier this year, Suzette Baker, a former librarian in Llano County, Texas, brought a lawsuit against library officials and the county, arguing that her First and 14th Amendment rights were violated when she was fired after she refused to take contested books out of circulation. All three librarians’ suits are ongoing; Baker and Lesley, who are both represented by the Denver-based civil rights attorney Iris Halpern, have argued that they have been discriminated and retaliated against for defending books that deal with race or L.G.B.T.Q. issues.

A lifelong resident of Watson, a small town near Baton Rouge, Jones, 46, was raised in a politically conservative Southern Baptist household, the daughter of a mechanic and a kindergarten and Sunday school teacher. She met her husband, also a Watson native, when they were in the first grade. She has been a teacher and librarian in Watson for 23 years, working at the same school she attended as a girl.

She’s never considered calling anywhere else home.

Two years ago, Jones’ life was upended overnight. It started when she saw that her local public library had listed “book content” on its board meeting agenda. At the meeting, a board member said she was concerned about books for children and young adults that had “inappropriate” content, but didn’t mention particular titles in her public remarks.

When members of the public were invited to comment, Jones spoke first, and argued that libraries need to reflect a broad range of ideas. “Just because you don’t want to read it or see it does not give you the right to deny others or demand its relocation,” she said. “If we remove or relocate books with L.G.B.T.Q. or sexual health content, what message is that sending to our community members?”

The blowback was vicious. A group called Citizens for a New Louisiana — which, according to its website, is seeking “to remove taxpayer-funded pornography, erotica, and gender dysphoria propaganda from the children’s section of library systems” — posted a photo of Jones on its Facebook page. The photo’s caption asked, “Why is she fighting so hard to keep sexually erotic and pornographic materials in the kids’ section?”

Another message on Facebook, posted by a local resident, accused Jones of “advocating teaching anal sex to 11-year-olds.”

Jones was stunned. She hadn’t mentioned any particular books at the meeting, and was certain that there was no pornographic material in the library.

The Facebook posts drove a flood of remarks calling her perverted, a sick pig and trash. Commenters said she should be fired. She got death threats. She recognized the names of some of the people who shared negative posts about her — people she had known since kindergarten, parents of her former students, members of her church, people she thought of as friends.

As the onslaught continued, Jones began having panic attacks. Over the next weeks and months, she fell into depression and became so stressed she started losing her hair. She struggled to eat and lost weight. Eventually she took a leave of absence from her job.

Jones, who has a teenage daughter, worried for her family’s safety. She started carrying a Taser, mace and a handgun, and had security cameras installed in her home and car. She was scared to go to restaurants, worried that someone might spit in her food. When she went to her daughter’s band concerts, other parents around her whispered and stared.

Two years later, she still feels like an outcast, she said. She gets her groceries delivered now. She stopped going to church, and instead does Bible study online at home.

“I’m the town pariah now,” Jones said. “I get called a pervert. I can’t grocery shop or go to the store without being called names.”

Jones’ friend Andrea Trudeau, a library information specialist at a middle school in Illinois, said she worries about Jones’ safety and mental health.

“She’s carrying a very heavy burden,” she said. “She’s working in the community where she lives, and she can’t escape it.”

Jones knew filing a lawsuit would expose her to more criticism, but decided she needed to defend herself. In the fall of 2022, she filed a defamation suit against Michael Lunsford, the executive director of Citizens for New Louisiana, and the man who posted a meme with her photo that claimed she supported teaching 11-year-olds about anal sex.

The lawsuit was dismissed less than a month later, when a judge ruled that the defendants were expressing their opinions online and not defaming Jones. After a higher court declined to hear her appeal, Jones recently asked the Louisiana Supreme Court to review the decision, and is still seeking to take her case to trial.

“The crazy thing about this case is they get to wave the freedom of speech flag in the lawsuit, but what started all this is they want to ban books,” said Jones’s lawyer, Alysson Mills, who is based in New Orleans and has a background in First Amendment law. “What we’ve been arguing ever since is you don’t have to agree with Amanda to see the injustice of her situation.”

Jones has paid her legal fees, which so far have totaled more than $60,000, with the help of a GoFundMe campaign.

Lunsford — who has continued to post negative comments and videos about Jones — disputed that he or his group had defamed her.

“We reported what she said at the meeting — that’s not defamation,” he said.

He said his organization has continued to focus on Jones because she has lobbied against measures that would require libraries to remove material with sexual content from the children’s and young adult sections. Titles his group objects to include “Dating and Sex: A Guide for the 21st Century Teen Boy” and “Let’s Talk About It,” a sex education guidebook for teenagers, which is aimed at high school-aged readers and contains graphic illustrations of people having sex and masturbating.

“She’s actively engaged in this battle,” he said.

With the publicity surrounding her book, Jones said that the online attacks have ramped up again.

Her family members declined to be interviewed for this article because they feared they would be targeted online as well, she said. She was alarmed when Lunsford, in a recent YouTube video, put her home address on the screen when he pulled up the business filings for Louisiana Citizens Against Censorship to show that she was listed as one of the organization’s directors.

“It’s Banana Jones, the girl who sued us because she couldn’t take the heat,” he says, while displaying her address. Asked about the video in an interview, Lunsford said he had “no idea” that it was her home address and was simply sharing a public business record.

Still, there have also been hopeful moments for Jones. Former students have reached out with messages of support. Authors whose books have been banned have praised her memoir, including Nikki Grimes, Jodi Picoult and Ellen Oh.

And Jones has been hearing from other librarians from around the country. Some are grateful that she has taken a stand. Others share distressing stories about harassment that they’ve faced for opposing book bans.

“It’s heartbreaking,“ Jones said. “It’s very hard, because I can’t tell them it’s going to get better, because there’s no guarantee that it will.”

[Alexandra Alter writes about books, publishing and the literary world for The Times. More about Alexandra Alter]