TAMPA BAY, FL — A Tampa Bay-area attorney fed up with a recent slate of conservative bills passed by Florida lawmakers — especially laws that have led to school book bans — has decided to fight back the best way she knows how: by starting a book club.
Erin Aebel’s Banned Book Club for Ferocious Floridians focuses on titles banned and challenged in the state’s public schools.
The group meets for the first time June 4, 2 to 4 p.m., in South Tampa. Those interested in participating in the club can RSVP to the Facebook event page and reach out to Aebel at [email protected] for the exact location.
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For their first meeting, book club members will read and discuss “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe. The graphic memoir was the most “challenged” book of 2022, topping the list for the second year in a row, according to the American Library Association.
“It’s a graphic novel about someone who is nonbinary and asexual and how they came about to realize that,” Aebel told Patch. “It was extremely informative and easy to read and not problematic to me. I felt like it was very helpful. … I could see young people reading that book and feeling like someone spoke to them. For someone in that position, it could maybe really help.”
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She’s no stranger to using book clubs and social media as vehicles for her activism.
In 2016, she co-founded the Facebook group Surly Feminists for the Revolution with “other awesome women,” she said.
The purpose of the group was to create a safe space for positivity, inclusiveness, progress and feminism, a space that rejects misogyny and prejudice during the presidential election that year. The name is a play on the phrase “nasty woman,” which was used by President Donald Trump to reference his opponent Hillary Clinton.
Through the Surly Feminists group, which remains active today with more than 11,500 members, Aebel launched a book club to bring people together in person.
“There was a lot of online communication and online stuff, but I felt like one-on-one communication in person was missing,” she said. “I thought the book club would be a good way to get people together in person to have conversations about feminism.”
The book club meetups, filled with “great conversations and people,” were a hit, but she stopped hosting them during the COVID-19 pandemic, she said. “I just didn’t have the emotional energy to move them online.”
These days, Aebel is a member of the Knights of the Krewe of Cavaliers, an LGBTQ-friendly regional social organization that was “founded on diversity and inclusion,” she said.
During a recent party she hosted for the krewe at her Tampa home, a newer member admired her personal library, which includes a range of titles and topics.
“Topics like racism, feminism and history, and also Florida noir and other things,” she said. “I realized that I missed the book club and needed to start it up again. I thought, maybe this is the time to do it.”
She’s been watching the slate of anti-LGBTQ bills being signed into law in recent years, including this spring’s expansion of the “Don’t Say Gay” law that limits conversations about sexuality and gender expression in public school classrooms for all grade levels.
“There are a lot of things going on in Florida that I find personally frustrating and I think many things are personally frustrating,” Aebel said. “I just don’t think that the majority view is being reflected in Tallahassee and the lawmaking. There’s so many offensive things to me and my values going on in state legislation.”
The worst thing to come out of these problematic new laws is “the banning of books and conversations that might be uncomfortable to some people,” the lawyer said.
Born and raised in St. Petersburg, Aebel’s mother taught English in local schools.
“So, I was always exposed to thoughts and books,” she said. “I never restricted my children, either. There are so many other problems as the parent of two teenagers than the books they want to read.”
After the first Banned Book Club for Ferocious Floridians event, the group will meet every other month. Each meeting will highlight a different book banned in Florida schools and will include a mix of fiction and nonfiction.
“I just want (titles) that school systems and leaders have found problematic and have tried to restrict young people from reading,” Aebel said. “We want to understand what’s being banned so when we have conversations with our family and young people so we can make decisions for ourselves.”
At each event, she’ll have book leaders divide attendees into smaller groups to discuss that month’s title.
“It’s about more than just books; it’s about people getting together and talking,” she said.
Aebel plans to find different venues throughout the region that are large enough to accommodate about 50 people for each meeting. She also encourages others to host their own banned book clubs.
“It’s an opportunity for people to get together and talk about the state of Florida and what we’re going to do,” she said. “We need to find ways to connect, to respect each other’s humanity, to have important conversations and to think critically. It really is imperative. You can’t just sit around while Rome is burning.”
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