Book Reviews

Sofia Y. Leung and Jorge R. López-McKnight. Knowledge Justice: Disrupting Library and Information Studies through Critical Race Theory. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2021. 358p. Paper, $35.00 (ISBN 978-0262043502).

Throughout library history, the lived experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) have not been centered, thoroughly documented, or affirmed. Marginalized and underrepresented. Those have been the adjectives used to describe people of color in the library field. Over the last couple of decades, library and information science (LIS) scholars and practitioners have begun to fill out the LIS literature by writing their own ideas, experiences, and histories. Knowledge Justice: Disrupting Library and Information Studies through Critical Race Theory, edited by Sofia Y. Leung and Jorge R. López-McKnight, is a groundbreaking text that is the first book that introduces and explicitly applies critical race theory (CRT) to the LIS field. Knowledge Justice is composed of three sections, each with an introduction by foundational CRT/LIS scholars and 13 chapters. Every word is edited and written by BIPOC scholars and practitioners. The book defines and weaves major tenets of critical race theory throughout the text: race as a social construct; racism as normal; experiences and knowledge of BIPOC; intersectionality; interdisciplinarity; whiteness as property; critique of dominant ideologies; focus on historical contexts; counterstorytelling and voice; and interest convergence. Critical race theory is deployed in Knowledge Justice to facilitate the understanding and dismantling of white supremacist structures that make the profession inhospitable and toxic to BIPOC library workers. Leung and López-McKnight powerfully quote bell hooks, stating that “we searched for theory because we were hurting and trying to understand in new ways what this world was trying to do to us and our communities” (27), connecting the importance of theory to praxis and their potential for healing. The book opens with a powerful dedication to BIPOC library workers who left the profession. While reading, it’s hard not to notice the other names of people of color who no longer work in this field. Our white-dominated profession wonders why this is, and why can’t we retain BIPOC library workers. Knowledge Justice explores and interrogates these questions and also finds answers and ways forward.

The first section of the book, “Destroy White Supremacy,” opens with an introduction from Todd Honma. He unpacks the CRT tenet, “Racism Is Ordinary,” describing how the chapters in this section illuminate the ways that racism and whiteness permeate our profession. Chiu, Ettarh, and Ferretti problematize ideas of neutrality, applying the framework of “Vocational Awe” to explore how White Supremacy in librarianship upholds these values in terms of access to facilities, public services, collections, and discovery. Morales and Williams analyze the ways in which information is not neutral. They use CRT to examine scholarly communication and epistemology, coining the term “epistemic supremacy.” Epistemic supremacy describes how systems of knowledge production and discovery can uphold the conditions that keep BIPOC communities oppressed. Further, Morales and Williams explore how librarian methodologies uphold these ideologies and encourage librarians to recognize and challenge epistemic supremacy. Brown, Cline (Coharie), and Méndez-Brady discuss the lived experiences of BIPOC library workers, particularly the labor and diversity work they often perform in libraries. This chapter offers a deep analysis of institutional documents related to diversity initiatives at academic libraries in North America, exploring labor inequities around diversity work within an institutional setting. Belarde-Lewis (Zuni/Tlingit) and Kostelecky (Zuni Pueblo) engage with Tribal Critical Race Theory as they evaluate three projects that share Zuni cultural information and knowledge. They preface their chapter by acknowledging the harm done by outsiders who have exploited the Zuni Pueblo community through their research. Their chapter is both a reclamation of the knowledge practices of the Zuni Pueblo people and an example of what scholarship looks like with a Tribal CRT lens.

The second section of the book, “Illuminate Erasure,” makes visible the nuanced, sometimes invisible, and insidious nature of racism and white supremacy in LIS through both personal narrative and historical lenses. Anthony W. Dunbar, among the first scholars to use CRT in LIS, introduces this section through his own journey as a CRT scholar and articulates what the authors in this section contribute to the LIS scholarship. In “Counterstoried Spaces and Unknowns,” Natarajan asks how we can use CRT as praxis to center the “experiences, lives, and futures of queer, trans, people of color in libraries?” (141) and uses counterstorytelling to recount their experiences as a queer, femme, nonbinary person navigating library spaces as a student and then as a librarian. Shaundra Walker’s chapter details the life and amazing work of Black activist-librarian Ann Allen Shockley, using CRT to appreciate the lived experiences of Black activist-librarians and trace the histories of how Black special collections came to be. Lugo Vazquez’s chapter provides an important historical perspective of children’s librarianship in the United States that centers both the experiences of Indigenous, Black, and People of Color (IBPOC) library workers who have contributed so much to children’s librarianship. Inefuku’s chapter explores knowledge production and inequities in academic publishing, using CRT to make visible the ordinary nature of racism as it informs the structures of scholarly communication. The chapters in this section recenter library history around the experiences and contributions of BIPOC library workers, making the structures of white supremacy in LIS more visible.

The final section of the book, “Radical Collective Imaginations Toward Liberation,” starts with an introduction by Tonia Sutherland that frames the chapters in this section through storytelling and counternarrative. Authors in this section write their own stories using the framework of counterstorytelling to reimagine what LIS could be. In “Dewhitening Librarianship: A Policy Proposal for Libraries,” Espinal, Hathcock, and Rios apply counterstory telling to illustrate the “story of diversity.” They introduce their term “dewhitening” as language that can push the field to take action and create policy changes. Cong-Huyen and Patel examine structural and systemic inequities in digital humanities librarianship, especially as they apply to BIPOC library workers. Through their exploration of labor, race, and the work of digital humanities scholarship, they posit radical self-care and community praxis as a way forward. In “Praxis for the People,” Winston offers an autobiographical lens as a way of applying counternarrative in archival work and then exploring how critical race praxis methods can be used in archival work. In the last chapter, “Getting Inflomation,” Kumasi uses creative writing to illustrate the use of CRT in a school library context. Using the perspective of a Black high school student, this chapter effortlessly applies CRT frames to real-life situations, written in a way that will be relatable to most readers. In their conclusion, Leung and López-McKnight let us know that they will not be pacing themselves on behalf of white privilege; they and the authors in this book are moving ahead to create the profession that they want: actively dismantling white supremacy and radically imagining the future where BIPOC in LIS thrive.

At the root of the human experience, the significance of feeling seen and heard, and being treated with humanity, cannot be understated. The legacy of white supremacy and racism in libraries has historically dehumanized BIPOC and continues to do so. In this collection, Leung and López-McKnight make space for BIPOC in LIS to tell their own stories and create their own profession on their own terms. This book is a tool for liberation, a salve for community healing, a sightglass for being seen, and an exercise in futuristic envisioning for what the library profession could be for BIPOC. Through the use of theory and scholarship, Knowledge Justice provides community and refuge for BIPOC library practitioners and scholars, presenting LIS with a slew of emerging frameworks and ideas to build upon for decades to come.—Annie Pho, University of San Francisco