Why Laphonza Butler is reading banned books out loud on the Senate floor

If you were looking for the book “Sister Outsider” a few years ago at a school in Tennessee, you might not have found it there. But thanks to California Sen. Laphonza Butler, parts of it now live in the Congressional Record.

“Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a Black woman, because I am a lesbian, because I am myself — a Black woman warrior poet doing work — who has come to ask you, are you doing yours?” Butler said on the Senate floor in February, quoting Audre Lorde.

In a quest to highlight book banning across the country, the Democratic senator has taken to reading passages from some of the targets out loud on the floor. “Sister Outsider,” a collection of Lorde’s speeches and essays, was temporarily pulled from the shelves of one school library over its LGBTQ themes.