These books are from the Duval County Public Schools system in Florida. In 2022, media and human rights organizations raised alarms after administrators pulled "Essential Voices" titles from their schools and classrooms. These books—featuring “characters representing a variety of ethnicities, religious affiliations, and gender identities”—had been purchased a year earlier in an effort to update the aging collection in one of Florida's most racially diverse counties. Citing pending censorious legislation, the school district ultimately purged 47 titles, more than half with LGBTQ+ characters or history. Those 22,500 books are now in Firestorm's care.
For more information on Duval's handling of Essential Voices titles, see this case study written by the Florida Freedom to Read Project.
In November 2022, our collective was contacted by a contractor who was handling the disposal of books banned by Duval County school administrators. They offered to ship them to us for free, explaining that if we didn't accept the books, they would be "pulped" (destroyed). Apparently, other southeastern queer-owned bookstores had already been approached, but no one else had the capacity to warehouse such a large quantity of titles.
