Meet the NJ Librarian Who’s Taking on the Culture Wars

Jennie Pu, director of the Hoboken Public Library, wears a tangerine-orange dress and hot-pink nail polish as she shows off her library to a visitor, greeting and introducing staff along the way. She wore a bright-pink suit to accept the Librarian of the Year award from the New Jersey Library Association in 2024. And, with the library’s rebranding since she became director in 2021, its van, two book bikes, and much internal signage are now hot pink.

“Bright pink isn’t just a color, it’s a declaration,” she says. “I choose visibility, joy and vibrancy.”

But make no mistake: Beneath her cheerful exterior is a woman of steel. Librarians have been in the crossfire of national culture wars since at least 2021, the year book banners began actively organizing to rid schools and libraries of literature they deemed inappropriate, according to the anti-censorship group PEN America. LGBTQ-themed books have been primary targets, but classics like To Kill a Mockingbird and Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl have also been removed from library shelves around the country.

Pu walked straight into the maelstrom in June 2023, when the library hosted a Banned Book Read-a-Thon in Church Street Park, across from the library, for Pride Month. Frequent Drag Queen Story Hour host Harmonica Sunbeam kicked off the festivities, and Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla, members of the city council, other civic leaders—and of course Pu—also read from storybooks with LGTBQ themes throughout the day.

“That’s what put us on the map with the banners,” Pu says.

As soon as the library promoted the event on Twitter, the attacks started—led, Pu says, by a group called Libs of TikTok. Commenters accused the library and its staff of being so-called groomers, pedos, degenerates and, in one case, a coven of Communist witches. One commenter threatened to “hold all of your staff accountable.”

Soon, the library was pummeled with hostile phone calls that included threats against library staff and their families. Pu had phone calls routed directly to her.

But Bhalla and the city council supported the library, and so did the people of Hoboken, she says, adding, “We held strong.” And even though the Proud Boys had stalked a Drag Queen Story Hour in Manhattan a few months earlier, Pu’s biggest worry that day, she says, was the weather.

After the event, Pu led the library to declare itself a book sanctuary, and the city soon followed. Pu helped 47 other public libraries in New Jersey do the same and was part of a successful effort to pass a Freedom to Read act in the state legislature last year—all of which led to her recognition, both by the New Jersey Library Association and the American Library Association, too.

Pu is understandably proud of this, but seems even more energized by the library’s swirl of services and events. “I’m very competitive,” she says. “I want us to be the best public library.”

Pu, 51, joined the Hoboken Public Library as director in 2021. A Seattle native, she moved to the East Coast in 2003, working in library jobs at Weill Cornell and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Pu has been living in Jersey City for 20 years, where she’s been an active school parent, and worked at Hudson County Community College before taking the Hoboken position.

In addition to innovations at the Hoboken library that preceded her, like a MakerSpace and a BookBike that brings books to neighborhoods throughout the city, Pu hired a full-time social worker and stocked the anti-overdose drug Narcan and hygiene kits on a bookshelf near the front door, with a sign that says, “Take what you need, no questions asked!”

She also added a Library of Things, a popular feature at libraries across New Jersey. Hoboken patrons can now borrow portable record players to hear some of the vinyl albums in the library’s collection. Other borrowable items include pickleball gear, pressure washers, binoculars, external disc drives and madeleine pans for baking. Pu has also started a seed library, cooking lessons and a bilingual story hour.

The library hosted stand-up comedians for a fundraiser in May. And a mobile beehive is in the works.

Comedy and a howling crowd at a public library? It’s quite a change from the strict librarian of yesteryear, with a finger raised to her lips in a pursed scowl.

Pu laughs and says, “I get shushed by the patrons.”

The Jersey native and Rutgers alum wrote the first illustrated monograph on the late filmmaker behind When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle.