Renowned authors of young adult literature Jason Reynolds, Angie Thomas and Renée Watson read from their work and shared stories from their creative lives at Waterloo’s West High School on Saturday.
The event, billed as a “Read-In,” was organized by the 1619 Freedom School, cofounded by journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and educator Sheritta Stokes in 2021. The organization runs after-school reading programs with a mission to create “liberation through literacy.”
The promise of that mission was on full display in the personal stories of the presenting authors.
“By the time I was born in the ‘80s and then growing up in the ‘90s, a drug called crack cocaine had changed my entire community,” Angie Thomas, author of The Hate You Give, said of her childhood home in Jackson, Mississippi.
She often heard gunshots in her neighborhood and saw the impacts of the drug crisis on people in her community. But her grandmother’s insistence that Thomas read from a young age offered an escape.
“I made up stories on my way to school every morning in a neighborhood that had stories happening around it every single day, all the time. And I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful for books. I'm thankful for my imagination. It was survival for me,” Thomas said.
Watson, whose books include Piecing Me Together and All the Blues in the Sky, read selections from her poetry. Introducing her work, she said mainstream culture focuses on “what Black folks have struggled through and not our humanity.”
“Know that your aunties matter, your grandmother matters, the food you eat matters, the music you love to listen to — all of that is important. Not just your pain,” she said, addressing the Black community in the audience.
The event was designed to resist state laws that limit children’s access to certain books.
In 2023, the Iowa Legislature passed Senate File 496, which initially resulted in public schools removing an estimated 3,400 books, comprised of 1,000 unique titles, from their libraries, according to a survey conducted by the Des Moines Register.
Lawmakers said the action aimed to uphold “parental rights” and ensure that children could access only “age-appropriate” materials.
Despite a series of legal challenges, a federal appeals court ruled in April that the law could take effect.
Critics of the law, including the organizers of Saturday’s event, characterize it as a “book ban.” Hannah-Jones grew up in Waterloo before cofounding the 1619 Freedom School and establishing a storied career as an investigative journalist.
“Having access to books was transformative for me as a young, working-class Black girl in a very white state in a very economically depressed community,” Hannah-Jones said.
As such, she said she takes the removal of books “very personally,” and organized the read-in to highlight the issue.
The event was modeled on a similar read-in organized by the Freedom School in 2025 after the Waterloo Community School District canceled its own read-in over concerns about losing its federal funding.
Publishers sponsoring this year’s event donated nearly 5,000 books, which were distributed to attendees after the program. Volunteers handed out the books over long tables set up in the West High cafeteria. The room bustled, with many excited attendees opening snacks and sitting down to read their new books on the spot. Others lined up to meet the authors and have their books signed.
Lya Williams traveled from Johnston with her son for the event. Her concerns over the passage of the 2023 law inspired her to serve on her local school board.
Listening to her community discuss Senate File 496, Williams recognized “there’s so many different streams of thought that go through it all.” But she said her own experiences with reading shaped her belief in the importance of access to all types of stories.
“There is a freedom in knowing that you can immerse yourself in literature,” she said.
Her arms were piled high with a collection of new books, many of them featuring Black and LGBTQ characters — some of which are unavailable in public school libraries under Iowa law.
