Education Week - October 19, 2022 - 14

Q&A
Banned-Book Author: If a Book Isn't in the
School Library, 'It Might as Well Not Exist'
What was your reaction to seeing your name and
your book on one of those " most banned books "
lists?
My main reaction is just sadness and disappointment and I
wish this had not been a sad chapter for teachers and librarians.
Instead, it's turning into a perennial strategy for right-wing
groups to terrorize educators and librarians and students alike.
Whatever distress or frustration I feel, I know it is nothing
compared to what it is to show up in communities where these
[book banning] efforts are underway by community members,
by the right-wing groups [that] push them forward, [or by]
opportunistic politicians to undermine public education and
what it is [for teachers and school librarians] to try to do your
best work for young people in an environment where rather
than being treated as a trusted partner, you're being viewed
with suspicion and hostility.
There's no relief for teachers and librarians and it means
Conversation with
Ashley Hope Pérez
Author of Out of Darkness, the third most banned book in the country
As book bans across the country have escalated, some authors are caught in
the crosshairs of the debates over the content in these books.
Books about LGBTQ characters or books with a protagonist or a secondary
character of color are most likely to be banned, according to a PEN America
report. From July 2021 to June 2022, PEN America found 2,532 instances of
individual books being banned from schools, affecting 1,648 different book titles.
One of the most banned books is Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez,
which has been banned in 24 school districts, according to PEN America. The
award-winning young adult novel is a teenage love story featuring a MexicanAmerican
girl and an African-American boy in 1930s New London, Texas. The
story is set over a period of time leading up to the real-life New London School
explosion 1937, when a natural gas leak caused an explosion that destroyed the
school, killing 300 students and teachers.
The story touches upon themes of racism, segregation, and classism. Last
September, it was first challenged in Lake Travis Independent School District
in Texas when a parent read a passage from the book at a board meeting that
referred to anal sex.
" I do not want my children to learn about anal sex in middle school, " said
parent Kara Bell at that meeting.
The Lake Travis ISD then removed the book from two other schools for being
sexually explicit and inappropriate. A few other districts followed, banning the
book for the same reasons.
Pérez, an assistant professor at Ohio State University and former high school
English teacher, has been actively working to oppose book bans in collaboration
with other organizations such as PEN America, a free speech advocacy
organization and Red Wine and Blue, a parent group comprised mostly of
Democratic-leaning suburban moms, since last year.
She's received personal criticism and watched videos of her book being
challenged and critiqued in school districts across the country since last fall, but
she is still fighting for the chance for all students to be able to read her book and
others that offer them representation and teach them about the complex history
of our country, she said.
This conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
What are some of the critiques you've heard
about from the people that want your book
banned and do you think there's any merit to
them?
Criticisms being levied against Out of Darkness, Genderqueer,
and All Boys Aren't Blue, are pretext. And the reason we
know they're pretext, and not sincere concerns, is that these
same themes and the same level of engagement with sexual
identity or violence exists in books that feature white, straight
characters. Yet, for some reason, those are not the lion's share
of the book challenges.
It's really an effort to target certain identities and reinforce
a message to right-wing groups and to the political base. There
are parents who get swept up in this who genuinely believe
they're concerned about young people, whether [it's] their own
children or students in their community, but the reality is that
those parents are just pawns in a political game.
What about allegations that claim these books
are inappropriate because of sexually explicit
content or that they're " pushing pornography on
children? "
Pornography is a very specific term, it refers to materials
that have as their sole purpose sexual arousal. And I can tell
you, the explicit passages in Out of Darkness which deal with
rape or sexual abuse are not intended to be sexually arousing.
It is missing the point of literature which engages with human
experiences in complex ways.
Something that is literature can't be pornographic, because
literature is always doing something more than simply arousing
sexual interest.
As far as anyone trying to claim that this literature that we're
talking about is sexually explicit or inappropriate, does your kid
have a cellphone or a best friend or a soccer teammate with a
cellphone? Because if they do, they can access actual porn in
two swipes. So let's stop pretending that books are the problem
that you need to focus on.
we're going to lose more and more teachers and librarians.
I don't know how I would tolerate a climate that these groups
are managing to inflict on educators right now. And I don't
know as a young person with a non-dominant identity of any
kind, what it could possibly feel like to try to walk into a school
where you know that there are people who are working their
hardest to erase stories that reflect your experience.
14 | EDUCATION WEEK | October 19, 2022 | www.edweek.org
Courtesy of Ashley Hope Pérez
http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - October 19, 2022

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