Louisiana Voice

Livingston Parish school librarian Amanda Jones is going to the Sundance Film Festival.

Or rather, the story of her struggles with would-be censors is going to be the subject of a documentary scheduled to debut at next year’s Sundance Festival.

In case you do not remember, Amanda is one of those rare people who have the courage to stand up and say “ENOUGH!” to those self-appointed morality police who want ban books that they most likely have never read but instead, just parrot what someone who is not even from Livingston Parish says we should do.

Amanda’s fight against the book burners drew the attention of OPRAH WINFREY who gave her a shout out at the National Book Awards back in November of 2023. Amanda’s battle was also chronicled by NBC News, The Hill, Education Week, The Independent, The American Library Association, NPR, Huffpost, The New York Times, Library Journal, Education Leader Diane Ravitch’s blog and the Baton Rouge Advocate.

She also has written a book titled That Librarian, which tells the sad story of how she stood up to censorship and of the price she and her family have paid psychologically from the threats and insults hurled at them by people who know better but still choose to act out their bigotry.

She held a packed-house BOOK SIGNING back in August and accompanying our story of that event was an interesting list of book titles that the extremists would ban from the Livingston Parish Library. The Grapes of Wrath? Really? All the King’s Men (written by LSU professor Robert Penn Warren)? Of Mice and Men? To Kill a Mockingbird? Here’s a more comprehensive list of proposed bans:

• Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
• The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
• Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
• Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
• Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
• The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
• To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
• Charlotte’s Webb, by E.B. White
• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
• The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
• 1984, by George Orwell
• The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner
• Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
• Animal Farm, by Geore Orwell
• The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
• As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
• A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
• Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
• For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
• The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
• All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren
• The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
• The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
• In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
• The Naked and he Dead, by Norman Mailer
• An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser

But back to the Sundance Film Festival – because it’s a pretty big thing.

Sarah Jessica Parker, the actress from the Sex and the City TV series (can we even say that with all the decency police watching?), is the executive producer for the documentary entitled The Librarians.

Amanda is to be the central character in the film but like the other librarians featured, will not be paid for her appearance. “It’s empowering to me,” she told the Baton Rouge Advocate, “but it’s also daunting.” She said the film will reveal the told placed on her reputation and on her family. “I don’t think people realize the attacks that I’ve been under,” she said. “I get to tell the truth about what happened to me on this documentary…”

The Sundance Film Festival kicks off on January 23 and The Librarians will premiere on January 24 in Park City, Utah. Following its debuts in the film festival circuit, it is expected to be made available to a major streaming platform such as Netflix, Prime or Hulu.