Guest Host Maggie Tokuda-Hall

Welcome to the Stone Soup Weekly Digest! This is where I share what I'm up to and some of my favorite things from around the internet. Today, the amazing Maggie Tokuda-Hall is taking over the digest while I am traveling. Subscribe to Stone Soup to get this in your inbox every week.

Maggie Tokuda-Hall has an MFA in creative writing from University of San Francisco. She is the author of the 2017 Parent's Choice Gold Medal winning picture book, Also an Octopus, illustrated by Benji Davies. The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea is her debut young adult novel, which was an NPR, Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Book Page Best Book of 2020. Its sequel, The Siren, The Song and The Spy was released in September 2023. Her graphic novel, Squad, is an Ignyte and Locus Award nominated comic book, and her newest picture book, Love in the Library, has been named a Best Picture Book of 2022 by Book Page, School Library Journal, Booklist, and Publisher’s Weekly. Maggie is a founding member of Authors Against Book Bans. 

I'm so grateful to Gailey for giving me the chance to stand on my little soapbox and scream a bit more about the rising tide of fascism as marked by the increased organization on the far right around book bans. Gone are the comparatively quaint days of banning Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark for being too scary. Now, book bans are being leveraged to defund all our institutions of public learning. The dark money interest in privatization and hegemony has figured out that book bans are a cheap way to achieve their goals of undermining cross-group solidarity, eradicating public education, and disempowering the historically marginalized by fanning the flames of easily ignited bigotries on the right. And this movement has been incredibly successful so far—not just on the district level, but on the state level.

The Bad News

• As a result of House Bill 710, the public library in Donnelly, Idaho will become adults-only starting July 1st.
• Ohio is now considering nearly identical legislation in their statehouse while simultaneously purging their voting rolls. 
• In South Carolina, there are not one, but TWO noxious bills being considered that create the framework for banning and defunding libraries.

The Good News

• You can always help! Consider donating to San Francisco independent bookstore FABULOSA's banned book buying program that ships LGBTQ+ books to communities who need them! You can read more about the program here and donate here.
• If you're an author, illustrator or anthology editor or contributor, translator or have EVER had your name on a book, join Authors Against Book Bans.
• And if you'd like to stay in the know about this issue, subscribe to Book Riot's Literary Activism newsletter, which is written by Kelly Jensen and is the absolute best source of news on the subject.

Maggie is Reading: Stories are Weapons by Annalee Newitz

In Stories Are Weapons, best-selling author Annalee Newitz traces the way disinformation, propaganda, and violent threats―the essential tool kit for psychological warfare―have evolved from military weapons deployed against foreign adversaries into tools in domestic culture wars. Newitz delves into America’s deep-rooted history with psychological operations, beginning with Benjamin Franklin’s Revolutionary War–era fake newspaper and nineteenth-century wars on Indigenous nations, and reaching its apotheosis with the Cold War and twenty-first-century influence campaigns online. America’s secret weapon has long been coercive storytelling. And there’s a reason for that: operatives who shaped modern psychological warfare drew on their experiences as science fiction writers and in the advertising industry.

Now, through a weapons-transfer program long unacknowledged, psyops have found their way into the hands of culture warriors, transforming democratic debates into toxic wars over American identity. Newitz zeroes in on conflicts over race and intelligence, school board fights over LGBT students, and campaigns against feminist viewpoints, revealing how, in each case, specific groups of Americans are singled out and treated as enemies of the state. Crucially, Newitz delivers a powerful counternarrative, speaking with the researchers and activists who are outlining a pathway to achieving psychological disarmament and cultural peace.

Barnes & Noble | Bad River Website | Local Library | Find an Indie Bookstore

Featured New Release: Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi

One weekend.The elite underbelly of a Nigerian city.A party that goes awry.A tangled web of sex and lies and corruption that leaves no one unscathed.

Aima and Kalu are a longtime couple who have just split. When Kalu, reeling from the breakup, visits an exclusive sex party hosted by his best friend, Ahmed, he makes a decision that will plunge them all into chaos, brutally and suddenly upending their lives. Ola and Souraya, two Nigerian sex workers visiting from Kuala Lumpur, collide into the scene just as everything goes to hell. Sucked into the city’s corrupt and glittering underworld, they’re all looking for a way out, fueled by a desperate need to escape the dangerous threat that looms over them.

Barnes & Noble | Bad River Website | Local Library | Find an Indie Bookstore

If you’re a paying subscriber, come by the Stone Soup Supper Club for our weekly chat! I can’t wait to find out how you’re doing.

—Gailey