Imagine a village where the only source of warmth in winter is a great communal fire. This fire is fed by logs passed down through generations. Each log holds the memory of how to plant, how to heal, how to build, and how to dream. Some villagers tell stories around the fire so that no knowledge is lost, while others carve new lessons into the wood before tossing them into the flames, ensuring the warmth continues.
Now imagine that one-by-one, certain logs are pulled from the pile. Some claim these logs burn too brightly, that they challenge the old ways. Others insist that some stores make the fire unpredictable and uncomfortable. Eventually, in the name of order, the logs are stacked out of reach, and the fire dims. The village grows colder. People forget what they once knew.
This is what happens when books are banned.
Carl Sagan wrote that books are "proof that humans are capable of working magic." To him, a book was a time machine, a means of speaking with those long gone, a way for knowledge to outlive its creator. Rebecca Solnit, in her explorations of power and storytelling, has shown how those in control of narratives shape what people believe to be possible. A library, then is not merely a collection of books. It is a kind of fire, illuminating the past and guiding the future.
And yet, in the United States, that fire is under siege.
Recently, more book bans have surged across school districts and libraries, targeting works that challenge dominant narratives about race, gender, history, and power. Many of the books being removed are those that give voice to the marginalized, that ask ask uncomfortable questions, that tell stories some would rather not be heard. The motivations vary from moral panic to political opportunism and fear. The outcome remains the same: a shrinking of intellectual space, a deliberate dimming of the fire.
However, book bans are not the only threat. Even where censorship is not at play, the slow starvation of public libraries has a similar effect. Across the country, libraries face severe budget cuts, staff layoffs, and in some cases, outright closures. A defunded library is, in its own way, a banned library. One that exists in theory but not in function.
Libraries are more than repositories of books. They are community centers, literacy hubs, job-search lifelines, and safe spaces for those with nowhere else to go. They offer free access to knowledge in an era where paywalls and algorithms increasingly dictate who gets to learn. They are, as author and literacy advocate, LeVar Burton has said, "the soul of a community." Burton has long championed libraries not just as places to discover books, but as critical spaces for imagination, empathy, and empowerment. Without them, the gap between those who have access to knowledge and those who do not grows wider.
Sagan warned of a world where anti-intellectualism could take hold when critical thinking was discouraged. Solnit reminds us that stories are a survival tool, that "we think we thell stories, but stories tell us...they tell us how to live, what to love, what to be afraid of." When libraries disappear, so do the stories that shape resilience, empathy, and change.
What's happening now isn't new. Every era has its book burners, its censors who believe that restricting ideas will stop them from existing. But history shows that stories are persistent. They slip through cracks, whisper through time, find new forms. The fire may flicker, but it does not go out easily.
The real question is whether we let it dwindle or tend to it, whether we pass the logs freely, telling stories so no knowledge is lost and the warmth continues. If we are to resist the cold of ignorance, we must keep the fire burning.