Free Expression Friday: South Carolina Book Bans with Tayler Simon, Liberation is Lit

Tayler Simon is the creator of Liberation is Lit in Columbia, South Carolina. 

Tayler Simon from Liberation is Lit in Columbia, South Carolina. Thank you so much for joining me. Can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about Liberation is Lit?

My name is Tayler Simon. I am from Columbia, South Carolina, and was born and raised here. I have a Social Work background, so that influences the community-centered approach I take with Liberation is Lit. My bookstore, Liberation Lit, is predominantly pop-up and online for right now — I’m working on getting a storefront — and I prioritize selling books by Black, Indigenous, People of Color, LGBTQ+, and Disabled writers. It started as a social media community and a blog, and then last year, on June 10th, I turned it into a bookstore. I'm all about using the power of storytelling, especially from those of us who are most marginalized, to really drive change and make the world a better place.

Tell me a little bit about that jump from social media to a bookstore. In some ways, they're all part of the same mission, and in some ways it's a very different approach. What inspired that, and how has it been going?

I wanted to have a physical space for people to come and gather and organize, and I felt like books were a very approachable way to do that. And I was just telling somebody today that there are a lot of us readers who read for pleasure and escape, but books really were the driving factor that politicized me. So I wanted to share some of those skills with my community. 

And like I said, I come from a social work background. I had been working in nonprofits, and working in nonprofits can be really hard. Especially [since] my background is in working with survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. I was kind of getting burned out from that work. So I decided to transfer some of my outreach and education skills to broader social justice issues. 

Working with survivors is still near and dear to my heart, but I get to open it up and talk about a whole host of things through the different books that I read and recommend. I'm amazed to see how much connection and community I've been able to build in the last year-and-some-change, and it's all because of that bookstore aspect and being able to meet with people face to face, when I'm at a market or another vendor event and really connecting with them on the books that we're reading. 

I've been working with local nonprofits, too. Doing book clubs and seeing close up that transformation, connecting the stories that we're reading to larger contexts in the world — that's been really cool. So the bookstore aspect really allows me to connect to community. [It’s] not necessarily [that] social media [is] shallow, but making those deeper connections when you get to have a conversation that's outside of a comment section [is different]. Even though I'm really grateful for my start on Instagram, especially because I was able to build some really good connections with readers and authors from all over, I was really excited to get to do this work in my community. 

It's so funny — I'm still not used to it. Like, if I'm at one of my favorite coffee shops, Curiosity Coffee here in Columbia, there have been several times where people are like, “You’re Liberation is Lit, right?” And I’m like, “Gosh… yes!” I’m able to reach community a lot faster. I’m happy people feel like I’m approachable to be like, “Hey, let’s talk about books!” Because I’m always down to talk about books.

That's amazing! Normalize recognizing free expression advocates in the coffee shop. I love that. 

Ugh, Tayler… I feel like we have to talk about Ellen Weaver. I would really love not to, but… Can you just tell us a little bit about what’s going on in South Carolina? Because it is maybe not grabbing the headlines in the way Iowa is right now, or Texas, or Florida, but something really unsettling happened in the South Carolina legislature over the past few months.

Yes, I've been there regularly this previous legislative session. I'm part of my local ACLU’s freedom to read group, and the legislative session has been keeping us busy. So basically, in South Carolina, there's been a lot of censorship bills both for taking books off the shelves in public schools here in South Carolina, but also a lot of anti-DEI initiatives for colleges and universities especially. And while luckily the book banning initiative did not pass in the South Carolina legislature, the anti-DEI bill did, so there's a lot of censorship happening in South Carolina. We had AP African American Studies, and that recently has been taken. Our schools will also not give college credit for those students who passed the exam. So there's a lot of censorship issues going on. 

But what is scary around book banning in South Carolina is that our head of the South Carolina Department of Education, Ellen Weaver, is one of the almost hand-picked, MAGA, Project 2025 folks. She is a major player in that fight, and she has passed initiatives for the school districts specifically to make it a lot easier for individuals to bring challenges to school officials to get books removed off of shelves. So that was a huge blow. I was just talking to somebody the other day that this is the first school year where the kids in South Carolina started school and all of this is happening. 

People hear about Project 2025 and they're like, okay, once we stop Donald Trump from being elected, that's the end of that. But we're not realizing that what's [in that plan] has been happening already, and they have been setting up the pieces for a really long time. Book censorship is part of that fight. And the anti-DEI initiatives are really hurting [free] expression. I remember when I was still working in higher education — when Trump was president and all of the anti-DEI stuff started, and anti-critical race theory stuff really started happening — I remember I was [involved in] a bystander intervention program, but I really wanted to add a lot of anti-racist approaches, and that was really difficult to navigate: what you couldn't say as an institution receiving federal funds. So it's been happening, and it's just getting a lot worse, especially in South Carolina. And I feel like South Carolina kind of flies under the radar because I think we're not as loud about it. And to me, that's scary. Because at least when the threat is loud, you can see it for what it is and people are paying attention to it. But here in South Carolina, it's subtle.

With these regulations that she passed through the Board of Education — they passed through the legislature in a really shady way, right? It seems like there's been actually a lot of outrage, the rare bipartisan outrage, about how some of these standards were passed. Do you think that there's a chance of pushing back against those, or there other things that you're especially keeping an eye on in the legislature for the next session in South Carolina?

I think right now. which I have feelings in general, about how progressives are always on the defense, because they want us always on the defense. Right now, we have a lot of focus on how we can amend certain things and make compromises to make things more able to pass, to get at least a little bit of what we want. So we have been looking at how to compromise that way which… I don't know. I guess it's disheartening for me as a radical. 

I think the defense is really important in what we're doing, and trying to do harm reduction, and finding ways where we can take this extra terrible part out, to see how we can live to fight another day. But I also believe we can organize and come together as a community outside of legislation. 

That's why I do a lot of education in the community about what you can do besides just talking to your elected officials: requesting banned books to be a part of your local library, buying copies of these banned books, giving them directly to children who have an interest in reading them, and in general just having conversations with your kids about the things that they’re reading. Because like I said, books politicized me. Books have that ability to not only politicize, but really confirm identity formation — who we are as people. And when these books are taken away from kids who don't get a lot of that representation otherwise, that can be very detrimental to them.

So I'm doing a lot, going to the state house, and keeping up with all of that, but also educating people. Because sometimes we feel these people above us are making all these decisions. But what can we do as citizens to take some of that power back from people who pass [legislation] without the people's best interests at heart?

Of course, in terms of going beyond legislation, the physical space that you want to open is going to be so important to that. Are you still raising funds for it? What's the best way people can follow that or follow you so that they know how to support you?

Yes. Anything that will help me make the transition smoother, to get new books (because right now I'm primarily a used bookstore. So getting new books and furniture will be really helpful. I had been slowing down on looking for a storefront, but now I'm getting close again. I'll start up crowdfunding efforts again [soon].

You can follow me on Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook, my main three social media platforms, @LiberationIsLit. In my bio for all three should be a link to my GoFundMe.

Tayler Simon from Liberation is Lit in Columbia, South Carolina, you're doing incredible work. Thank you so much for everything you do.

Thank you so much for having me.