Why We are Suing the City of Los Angeles to Save Libraries

Jenan Matari and Nora Lester Murad are award-winning authors with children’s books featuring Palestinians. They have filed a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles after their invited author talk for teen patrons at Los Angeles Public Library was cancelled without explanation three days before the scheduled date of December 6, 2025. In this edited transcript, Jenan and Nora discuss what it feels like to be censored, the pervasiveness of anti-Palestinian racism, and their reasoning for filing the suit in order to save the integrity of libraries.

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Nora Lester Murad: You and I met through the experience of being censored by anti-Palestinian racism. The Los Angeles Public Library invited me to talk about my young adult novel, Ida in the Middle, and you to talk about your picture book, Everything Grows in Jiddo’s Garden. 

Jenan Matari: The whole purpose of Read Palestine Week is to make space for Palestinian stories given the widespread censorship. When they invited me to speak, I assumed the library must be on board. Aren’t all libraries against censorship, against book challenges, against racism?

NLM: I learned a lot about censorship of Palestinians in libraries while putting together my recently-published co-edited anthology, Resisting Erasure: Libraries in Palestine and Palestine in Libraries.

JM: It’s so ironic that you were censored and released a book about censorship at the same time!

NLM: Right? Libraries are under attack not only by right-wing forces outside the library, but also by internal forces with nefarious political interests. Libraries are sites of censorship and also sites of resistance to censorship. 

I don’t see the lawsuit as attacking the library. I see it as defending the integrity and credibility of libraries.

JM: Some people are saying that we risk weakening libraries through our lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles. They say we need to be defending libraries, not attacking them.

NLM: We aren’t attacking the library. I see it as defending the mission of public libraries and values of librarianship. When we hold libraries—or schools or city and state agencies or federal actors  accountable—we are advocating for them to stay relevant and safe for everyone.

JM: I hadn’t really grasped that when we were first censored. I think all Palestinian authors and speakers have faced various levels of censorship. My cancellation from Watchung Booksellers in New Jersey was even covered by the New York Times, but I realize now that when the censorship comes from a public library, it’s really dangerous. We can’t even dream of a functioning democracy without public libraries that are strong enough to stand against racist political pressure, whether from without or within.

NLM: And what’s sad is the fact that, while anti-Palestinian censorship is more visible than ever, the groups that oppose book banning haven’t really included Palestinians. 

JM: We got proof of that when many of our formal complaints to anti-censorship organizations about the Los Angeles Public Library were ignored, or worse.

I can’t imagine any other group of people who are being mass murdered live on social media being ignored the way that Palestinians are ignored when we tell our truth.

NLM: I hold a special animus for nonprofits that build their reputation on defending people—including raising money from people committed to the mission—and yet they exclude Palestinians. It was disturbing that the people who were supposed to defend us against racist censorship did the same thing! 

JM: It seems that we Palestinians are always negotiating for our right to exist. I can’t imagine any other group of people who are being mass murdered live on social media being ignored the way that Palestinians are ignored or silenced when we tell our truth.

NLM: We did get about twenty statements of support, including from the National Coalition Against Censorship, the ACLU-Southern California, the Authors Guild, Palestine Legal, and others. 

JM: And more than 100 Los Angeles Public Library staff signed a solidarity letter supporting the librarians who invited us and opposing the administration’s decision to cancel us. And over 7000 letters were sent to library officials protesting the censorship. And people showed up at the meetings of the Library Board of Commissioners to call for the event to be reinstated.

NLM: They never responded to our multiple requests for a conflict resolution meeting, a provision that was in our author speaker contracts. To all those free speech groups, the library sent the same prepared statements they gave to inquiring journalists, which were ridiculous and contradictory. Was their decision based on how resources were being allocated? Was it because the event wasn’t “consistent with our mission, city standards, and our commitment to city residents, including those who may carry different perspectives?” Was it because unnamed administrative procedures weren’t followed?

JM: Or was it because of my advocacy against the genocide?

NLM: Thus, the lawsuit.

JM: Thus, the lawsuit.

NLM: How did it feel as a Palestinian having a public institution forbid you from speaking about your own life experience?

JM: I mean, I must be doing something right to anger institutions of this size. But I’m also disappointed. I want to believe that society has moved beyond this. And as a mom of Palestinian kids, it hurts to know that I am being excluded from these spaces because of things that I teach my children. And so I just fall down this rabbit hole of trying to figure out if I can fix this before they have to deal with it.

NLM: Fix racism?

JM: Yes! And not just for the sake of Palestinians. I mean, I feel bad that you have been dragged down with me in all of this. Racism is something that I’m used to, but I don’t want to hurt somebody else’s ability to be able to pay their bills and live comfortably. 

NLM: Well, you didn’t affect my livelihood, the library affected my livelihood, and I feel that this is my fight too, not only because I’m the mother of Palestinian daughters, but also because my right to speak about my own commitment to everyone’s liberation is being threatened. I’m Jewish, and I’m being slandered as antisemitic.

JM: I mean, an internal email was circulated that said you and I had “strong terrorist ties” and “virulently antisemitic views.” That’s slander!

NLM: Thus, the lawsuit.

JM: I don’t want the Los Angeles Public Library to get away with this. Libraries have been my safe place for as long as I can remember. My mom used to take us to every event that the local library offered. In college, I spent five days a week in the library, sprawled out on the floor studying for exams and writing papers. Even when I was studying abroad, I lived in this beautiful 14th century abbey in England for six months, and I practically lived in the library. It was like a scene out of some wizard movie. The library is where I take my own kids. It’s where I wrote my second book that’s coming out soon.

NLM: I hate the message that the cancellation of our children’s event sends to Palestinian children. It’s like saying, “You can come to the library to learn about kids from all over the world except for Palestine.” Or, “You can come to the library to learn from Palestinians about their stories, but we will choose which ones are the good ones.”

JM: You’re describing my whole life. As long as I suppress a part of myself, which is always the Palestinian part, I can be friends with my neighbors or welcomed into mom groups in my town. I can even have decades-long friendships that seem real—until the moment they think I’m being too Palestinian or I don’t censor myself during a genocide.

NLM: By cancelling our teen event, the Los Angeles Public Library basically told Palestinian kids that they can’t bring their full selves to the library. That it’s not a safe space to be themselves. 

JM: Exactly. The library’s public statement said the library is “committed to upholding open access to information while ensuring that all library programs support inclusion and maintain a safe, welcoming environment for every patron.” In other words, the Read Palestine Week event would create an unsafe and unwelcoming environment for some patrons? They don’t seem to understand or care that cancelling the event creates an unsafe and unwelcoming environment for other patrons.

NLM: And what message do non-Palestinian kids get from this cancellation? They must be thinking, “Wow, those authors must be really dangerous for the library to cancel their talk. Palestinians must be dangerous people. Their stories must be dangerous. When I’m around them, I may be unsafe.”

JM: It’s so blatant. The racism.

Palestinian kids have the right to see themselves in books and have their stories told.

NLM: I knew somebody would complain about the event, and I knew they would allege antisemitism, because that seems to be the default accusation against people who believe in Palestinian rights. But I guess I thought we’d advocate and it wouldn’t get canceled. Or they would cancel and we’d make a fuss and they’d reschedule it. I didn’t expect the administration to ghost and gaslight us to this extent.

JM: The librarians themselves are divided. The librarians who invited us want Palestinians to be included just like everyone else. But other librarians are using racist slurs to discredit us, undermine our books, and control what Palestinians are allowed to say about their own lives. The administration of the Los Angeles Public Library should be listening to the librarians who oppose censorship, not to the racist ones. And if there is a credible question about a speaker’s appropriateness, the library should investigate and act rationally based on actual evidence. They didn’t even let us defend ourselves!

NLM: Thus, the lawsuit.

JM: And I just know it’s gonna be a long road to get what we want. The library will bank on people losing focus, moving on to some other cause. They expect us to give up.

It’s almost like Palestinians are pre-erased from people’s understanding of humanity

NLM: If it was just me being harmed, I probably would give up. There are truly more important things happening than a children’s book event being cancelled. 

JM: Like ending the genocide and the war on Iran, another ongoing genocide in Sudan, the ICE kidnappers on our streets, the inaccessibility of housing and healthcare…

NLM: But then I think about the stakes. There is a throughline from racist censorship of Palestinians to dehumanization to erasure, not only from books but off the face of this earth. It’s almost like Palestinians are pre-erased from people’s understanding of humanity, so then when they get literally genocided, it doesn’t register. We have to fight this here in the US, and we have to fight it in Palestine.

JM: People always talk about how Palestinians fight for future generations; like, I don’t want my kids to grow up with anti-Palestinian racism so normalized, but they just roll their eyes because it doesn’t surprise them. So many of our elders have acknowledged that they don’t think they will see a free Palestine in their lifetimes. But my generation? I think, we are very determined to see a free Palestine in our lifetime.

NLM: A lot of Jewish people are also determined to see a free Palestine in our lifetimes. The number is growing every day as young Jews realize that our wellbeing is not mutually exclusive. It’s entwined.

JM: I wrote a beautiful picture book for children about the intergenerational connection of indigenous people to land. I know how to talk to children. We aren’t “brown savages” who don’t know how to control our emotions and will blurt crazy things out in front of children. It bothers me that people make voices like mine out to be irrational because we have political opinions they don’t like. In fact, I have the platform that I have today because I do know what I’m talking about.

NLM: And we need your voice.

JM: It’s really, really annoying. It’s annoying to be silenced. We have important work to do, and these censorship tactics are meant to derail us from that work. Still, we have to fight censorship so we can speak about the things we need to fix.

NLM: From the documents that we now have through public information requests. It seems like they weren’t particularly concerned about what you would say. They just didn’t want you.

JM: Yeah.

NLM: They imply that your political views discredit you as a human being. You become unworthy because of your ideas.

JM: It’s so racist!

NLM: Some people still think there is a neutral, objective “normal” on one side, and on the other side there are Palestinians who are obviously biased. But the supposedly objective “normal” they refer to is Zionism, a political ideology that should be subject to critique like any other political ideology. But when you come in with a critique of Zionism based on your lived experience, you’re made out to be the spoiler, the agitator, the fringe. 

JM: I’ve embraced that identity. What else can I do?

NLM: You do it well, and it resonates with a lot of people.

JM: We’re gonna continue advocating. You know what I mean? I’m just kind of making my presence known, showing up in places that people don’t like seeing me in. I hate calling it tiny acts of resistance, but, truly, I sometimes put on a thobe and walk down my street with a kuffiyeh just because I can, even if it pisses off my neighbors, or maybe because it does.

NLM: I don’t believe that non-Palestinians like me have a right to judge the actions you take to demand respect for your right to live. And I don’t believe the Los Angeles Public Library has that right either.

JM: So, what are your hopes for an outcome to the lawsuit? Like, if you could get everything you wanted, what would you ask for?

NLM: I want it to become impossible for other libraries to censor Palestinians. I want them to think, “we better not disrespect Palestinians because look what happened to the Los Angeles Public Library.” Should the library’s reputation be harmed? Should some people lose their jobs? I do not mind if that happens, but I don’t think it’s enough to remove a few people if the structures, policies, and procedures stay the same.

If we want our public institutions to serve and protect us, we can’t allow their integrity to erode, whether from pressure from the outside or the inside.

JM: I have a lot of dreams for accountability. In an ideal world, the librarians who wrongfully claimed  that you and I have terrorist ties should be fired from their jobs, and they should pay some sort of damages for harming our careers.

NLM: There should be consequences all the way up the line.

JM: What those employees of the Los Angeles Public Library said about us is no joke. Activists who are being accused of connections to “designated terrorists” are being threatened with death in some cases. What they said is no joke.

NLM: And the way the library handled that internal racism was discriminatory. Do they have a written policy saying that social media posts can disqualify an author from speaking at the library or does this apply only to Palestinians? Do they have a written policy specifying what specific content in social media posts disqualifies an author from speaking at the library or is it only what Palestinians say? Do they have an official procedure to vet the social media accounts of every single author who is going to speak or do they only do that for Palestinian speakers? And if the library is claiming that your posts are not accurate, who is deciding what is and isn’t accurate, and what criteria are they using? Is the same procedure and criteria applied for every speaker or does it only apply to Palestinians?

JM: We’re pretty sure we know the answers.

NLM: I think that library patrons, the public, taxpayers, and policymakers with a conscience need to be willing to hold institutions accountable, because if we want our public institutions to serve and protect us, we can’t allow their integrity to erode, whether from pressure from the outside or the inside. Holding the Los Angeles Public Library accountable is pro-library, not anti-library.

JM: Thus, the lawsuit.

NLM: Yes, our lawsuit, but there are many ways people can hold public institutions like libraries accountable on a daily basis without filing a lawsuit.

JM: Asking libraries to add Palestinian books to their collections, featuring Palestinian books in displays, programming and booklists. And people can buy books about Palestinians, give them as gifts to teachers, and read them to their children. The point is just to make it normal to include Palestinians just like everyone else.

NLM: I’m curious, Jenan. If we had done the event, as scheduled on December 6th, what would you have wanted the kids to walk away with?

JM: Oh, that’s a really good question. I mean the whole purpose of Everything Grows in Jiddo’s Garden is to reconnect people to land. Not long ago, I finally got to do an event at a library. I was afraid it would get cancelled so I didn’t do any promotion, but it still turned out to be the largest event they’d ever had. It was a gardening event, planting seeds native to the area those kids were from. There was like ten minutes of just chaos, with kids throwing dirt everywhere and getting excited to get little seeds put in their hands, and then being able to bring their plant home, and take care of it. It reminds parents that there’s something else that they have to do in order for their kids to grow up to be good humans and contribute in good ways in the world.

NLM: That is really beautiful. And I can’t imagine that the administration of the Los Angeles Public Library can say with a straight face that an event like that is not inclusive.

JM: That’s how every single book talk or event about this book has gone. Because it truly is just a book about a girl and her grandpa and his garden. And some racist people just overcomplicate everything because the girl and her grandpa happen to be Palestinian.

NLM: Yup.

JM: What were you planning on saying at the event that got censored?

NLM: Because Ida in the Middle is for upper middle grade and young adult readers, the kids who come to my author events are often writers themselves. What I would have said at the Read Palestine Week event is what I always tell young readers. I say that if they can text, they can write, and if they can write, they can be a writer. They’re like “What? I can be a writer?” I always tell young people that nobody else can write their story and if they don’t tell their story, it will not get told. I tell them that their story matters.

JM: I love that.

NLM: Kids hear things and they do have questions. My book offers a way for kids to get curious. It helps to connect with their own life experience by asking questions like “Who am I and how can I become the person that I want to be?” I hope that seeing how Ida navigates her challenges gives them ideas about how they navigate the violence in their own lives, too. And I think there’s enough in my book for adults to become interested in learning more about Palestine and Palestinians, too. Because while there’s so much more to Palestinians than just being victims of the Nakba and of genocide, you also can’t minimize what Palestinians have gone through and continue to go through today.

JM: The talk they cancelled would have been so important. You and I have such good conversations with each other. They really robbed the children of being able to experience that.

NLM: They really did. And because they have now smeared us with slanderous falsehoods, other young readers may also not have the opportunity.

JM: Thus, the lawsuit.

NLM: Thus, the lawsuit.