LOS ANGELES — Travelers waiting for flights at Los Angeles International Airport can bide their time by having a meal, grabbing a drink, people watching — or, perhaps, reading a banned book.
At least that is the intention of a collaboration between the Los Angeles Public Library and LAX that will provide visitors to the world’s eighth-busiest airport with a free weeklong pass to the library’s digital collection.
If the proposal gets final approval from the L.A. City Council on Tuesday, screens throughout the airport will soon invite people to read a banned book by using a QR code to get a temporary library card, which can be issued to anyone, regardless of where they live.
The card will give the reader access to bestsellers as well as books that have been taken off shelves elsewhere in the country, such as Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” and the graphic novel “Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships and Being a Human.”
75 million travelers in 2023
Encouraging travelers to read a banned book may seem a minor skirmish in the broader culture wars. But proponents of free access to literature see programs like the LAX one — and Banned Books Week, celebrated from Sept. 22 to 28 — as a counterattack on efforts to ban books for their treatment of sexuality, race, violence or the occult.
More than 75 million travelers passed through LAX in 2023. The banned-book program will expand “ways in which art, literature and other forms of free enrichment are available to the traveling public,” said Lauren Alba, a spokesperson for Los Angeles World Airports, which owns and operates LAX.
Greg Burt, vice president of the Christian-based California Family Council, contends that opponents of book bans mischaracterize the efforts of organizations like his to control access to some books by minors.
“We are not having an honest conversation about this topic,” he said. “It’s just slogans and rhetoric — and pretending there is no book that a minor should not have access to.”
