But those are not the books that are being challenged. If I could make a stack of all of the books in the high school library with sexual content and make a stack of those that feature straight white middle class characters, that’s going to be the highest stack.

These books have in common centering characters or experiences from nonwhite, nondominant communities. Even though the most common reason given is sexual content, it is not the sexual content that these books have in common. Now, I often bring up the Bible because I grew up in a Bible church and I know that book really well, and I ask, “Do you think that the Bible is grooming young people to be sexually abused or gang raped or to engage in incest, because all of those situations occur in that text?” There’s just no denying the pattern of which books are being targeted. I portray these events to challenge them, not to endorse them. And she feels like that because she sees the books that aren’t getting banned. It’s about creating an environment in which the librarian, the next time they order books, is going to think twice before choosing a book that engages with difficult histories in our nation or that engages with LGBTQ identities or that engages with teen sexuality in some way, even if that book is highly recommended in professional journals for school libraries.Īnother thing that bothers Pérez is that while parents are often complaining to their schools about the sexual content of books like hers, that doesn’t seem to be their true objection to what she’s written. So it’s not even just about removing Out of Darkness from the library. And that’s kind of the goal here is to chill discourse and intimidate teachers and librarians. I’m going to teach the most unobjectionable thing. If I, as an English teacher, was afraid that one parent complaining would mean that all the books I was teaching were going to be removed, then what am I going to teach? I’m not going to teach the thing that’s challenging and controversial in some way. Districts have these policies for a reason.

And unfortunately, in these challenges that are happening all over the country, we’re seeing that over and over. Their policy was that they might review a book, but during that time, the book would remain on the shelves. You pointed out too that what the district did here-because this woman did win, and the book got taken off the shelves-violated their own policy.

Out of darkness book perez