“The days of coming to the library simply to get books are long gone,” says Guy A. Sims, chief diversity and inclusion officer of the Free Library of Philadelphia, the city’s public library system. “Today, the library is an active hub within the community. We’re a safe space—a common ground for people to come together.”
A key force in this shift is graphic novels. Comics have long established themselves in libraries with steady circulation rates, bringing patrons to branches to pick up the newest in a favorite series and to commune with fellow fans at library-sponsored events and clubs. Sims has personally made it his mission to transform the library so it “grows with the community’s needs,” he says. This work includes building book collections that speak to and reflect the experiences of patrons of color.
At a time when graphic novels by queer cartoonists and artists of color routinely top book ban lists, librarians like Sims are leveraging community partnerships to drive change and fight censorship. By forging alliances with nonprofits, businesses, and artists, comics librarians, led by the ALA’s Graphic Novels & Comics Round Table (GNCRT), support marginalized communities by ensuring that books by diverse creators stay on shelves and providing patrons with inclusive events and programs.
The work often starts within the library itself, then extends outward. For example, Sims and his colleague, art department librarian Alina Josan, are building a Black comics collection in-house, with titles such as Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith’s Wash Day Diaries, Roye Okupe’s E.X.O., and Sims’s own Eisner-nominated series, Brotherman, that spotlight Black heroes.
Sims, whose YA graphic memoir adaptation of Walter Dean Myers’s Bad Boy publishes in September from Quill Tree, is also partnering with the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention “to build the largest graphic novel collection by Black indie artists,” he says. “The first Black comic book, All-Negro Comics, came out of Philadelphia. It’s part of our history.”
Art all around
Josan is the force behind the Free Library’s Philadelphia Comics Collection, which houses more than 200 titles from Philly-based comics artists. Patrons can find indie releases including Charles Burns’s The Cutting Floor, Nick Bunch’s Desert Rats, and Joe Steinhardt and Marissa Paternoster’s Merriment, among self-published mini comics and zines.
“I’m thinking about the future,” Josan says. “Decades from now, people can see a snapshot of the scene.” She’s also partnered with the art studio Center for Creative Works to gather comics by artists with disabilities for the collection. The result is an authentically homegrown and inclusive exhibit, where local artists “feel seen at the library.”
Additionally, in Josan’s library-sponsored Comix Club, patrons study Lynda Barry’s guide for aspiring comics creators, Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor, and take workshops with local comics artists like Matt Madden.
“Alina is in tune with what’s going on in the community,” says Gina Dawson, co-owner of Philly comics shop Partners and Son. “She’s great about getting comics in a location where they’re accessible to people.” The store regularly partners with the library system, hosting comics exhibitions at the Athenaeum Library of Philadelphia, launching and distributing an illustrated Philly bookstore map within the Free Library system (in collaboration with Molly’s Books and Records), and curating the Philly Comics Now event at the Drexel Library.
D.C.-based nonprofit Shout Mouse Press credits these sorts of partnership events with turning the backlist comics collection Voces Sin Fronteras into a perennial bestseller. The volume, which features nonfiction comics from 16 immigrant youths, aims “to show who immigrants are, not just what others say we are,” according to Erminia, one of the artists featured in the book.
Events for the backlist title have ranged from a 2018 panel on immigration, put together with Maryland’s Takoma Park Library and D.C.’s Politics and Prose bookstore, to a 2024 talk at the library of Kendall Demonstration Elementary School for the Deaf. The current political climate presents, Erminia says, “the perfect time to show up again.”
Voces Sin Fronteras represents a trend of comics about the immigrant experience. New and forthcoming works from other independent and major publishers include From Cocinas to Lucha Libre Ringsides: A Latinx Comics Anthology, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama and Angela M. Sánchez (Mad Creek, July); Silenced Voices: Reclaiming Memories from the Guatemalan Genocide by Pablo Leon (HarperAlley, Sept.); and the “insightful,” per PW’s review, Call Me Emma: One Chinese Girl Finds Her Way in America by Makee (Street Noise, out now).
In solidarity
With the spike in book banning campaigns, comics librarians have been increasingly threatened and harassed online, which has led many library workers to lean into community activism. “We partner with comic shops or local bookstores to create solidarity and give our communities power when challenges arise,” says Shauntee Burns-Simpson, president-elect of the GNCRT, which provides comics librarians with resources, toolkits, and partnerships to fight censorship. “Comics can foster deeper conversations, action, and motivation for our community members to express themselves.”
Sims also points to how the comics format helps develop critical literacy, further empowering library patrons. “Graphic novels are dynamic tools,” he says. “Texts like Maus make difficult subjects accessible. That’s why we are very intentional about making sure our collection is diverse in style, content, and voices.”
According to Shira Pilarski, outgoing president of the GNCRT, comics librarians are particularly well positioned to connect with national advocacy organizations. Pilarski has partnered, for example, with Reforma, a national association that promotes library services for Latinos and other Spanish-speakers, to create a comics reading list for Spanish-language readers. They also worked with the ALA’s Rainbow Round Table to create a queer comics list.
These initiatives provide librarians with a tool to resist challenges. When a title makes one of the lists, Pilarski says, it means “a team of librarians said these books are good,” so “it’s easier to defend.” Challenges to books on these lists can often be more quickly dismissed, especially when the lists are created in partnership with organizations that further validate and lend credibility to efforts to resist censorship.
The GNCRT also offers free webinars and toolkits, like the Leaping Off the Page virtual panel discussion about comics programming in libraries, and the Addressing Comics Challenges Toolkit for fighting censorship. “We want to equip librarians with advocacy tools that they will need,” Burns-Simpson says. Libraries, she adds, are stepping up to “advocate for our intellectual freedom and racial equity against broader attempts to silence historically underrepresented voices.”
But libraries aren’t standing alone. “The library is the bridge that connects us with others,” Erminia says. As libraries face increased book banning efforts and threats to government funding, working with outside organizations can help them continue to thrive and support their communities.
“Partnerships are crucial at this time,” Burns-Simpson says. “Think about all the grassroots movements.” In taking on her leadership role at GNCRT, she’s energizing her base to look to the larger community for support in trying times: “Don’t leave any stone unturned.”
Ash Holland is a PW comics reviewer, bookseller, and freelance editor.
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