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Banned Books: Author Ashley Hope Pérez on finding humanity in the 'darkness'
This discussion with Ashley Hope Pérez is part of a series of interviews with — and essays by — authors who are finding their books being challenged and banned in the U.S.
Book cover with the back of braided hair down the center on a aged2 background. The cover bold orange and red across the braid.
Carolrhoda Lab
Ashley Hope Pérez is the author of the award-winning Out of Darkness, a young adult novel that has faced challenges and bans in the U.S. in recent years.
Pérez — who is a comparative literature professor at The Ohio State University in addition to having authored three novels — centers her writing on Latin American narratives3, making space for young Latino readers to see themselves in her work. She published Out of Darkness in 2015, a year that invoked4 a national conversation surrounding issues of race, environmental racism5, racialized violence and police brutality6.
Out of Darkness is based on a true-events: In 1937, a natural gas explosion at a school in New London, Texas, killed nearly 300 students and teachers — one of the deadliest school disasters in U.S. history. This historical context is foregrounded by the fictional7 love story between an African American boy and a Mexican American girl. The characters cross color lines and navigate8 familial tensions and traumas9.
The novel re-contextualizes contemporary issues of race, providing a historical framework in a not-so-post-racial America. After many years on bookshelves, in 2021 this frank portrayal10 earned the book a spot on the American Library Association (ALA) Banned Book List for "depictions of abuse and because it was considered to be sexually explicit11."
The interview below has been edited for length and clarity.
Out of Darkness, like many works of literature, engages with all kinds of aspects of human experience. And as a literature professor myself, I can tell you that literature from the Bible to Chaucer to Shakespeare to Faulkner deals with difficult topics because those aspects of life are the materials literature... it's not to be provocative12 or to distress13 anyone, but because when we want to write about human experience honestly and completely, we have to include the pain of being a person. And so I think that Out of Darkness is literature. And in many ways, what book banners in the present moment are suggesting is that literature that honestly engages human experience is somehow inappropriate for teenagers. And when we hear things like 'there is pornographic content in school libraries,' what we're really hearing is engagement with human experience, such as sexual experience — we're hearing that being portrayed14 as pornographic. But that's not that's not that's not true of Out of Darkness or the other books that have been vilified15 in this movement any more than it's true of the Bible being pornographic because it has sexual content.
On books about the past being resonant16 in the present
With Out of Darkness I was trying to do something a little bit different, which was to write the historical novel that readers like my students wouldn't be able to put down. A historical novel that, though being about the past, would seem powerfully resonant with their lives. In Out of Darkness, for example, I engaged the histories of school segregation17 in Texas, not just the ways that schools were segregated18 to separate Black Americans and white American students, but also what happened to Mexican American kids or anyone who was didn't fit into those categories. Texas had "Mexican schools" that were unequal in different ways and in some ways more damaging. And my students didn't know that history. So I thought with Out of Darkness about what my former students would want in a book about the past so that it would speak to them now. And a lot of what they wanted was honesty, not to see things sugarcoated or sanitized.
On bans overwhelmingly targeting authors who are marginalized
There will be people who buy the book because of hearing this interview. But for the hundreds of authors whose works have been banned but who haven't been interviewed on NPR, this can be career ending. I mean, losing access to school and library markets can be career ending for authors. And since these bans are overwhelmingly targeting people — authors of color and authors with other marginalized identities, this is a real threat to the modest progress we've made in diversifying19 children's literature and literature for young adults.
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| n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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narratives
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| 记叙文( narrative的名词复数 )； 故事； 叙述； 叙述部分 | |
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invoked
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| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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racism
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| n.民族主义；种族歧视(意识) | |
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brutality
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| n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮 | |
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fictional
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| adj.小说的，虚构的 | |
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navigate
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| v.航行，飞行；导航，领航 | |
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traumas
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| n.心灵创伤( trauma的名词复数 )；损伤；痛苦经历；挫折 | |
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portrayal
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| n.饰演；描画 | |
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explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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provocative
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| adj.挑衅的，煽动的，刺激的，挑逗的 | |
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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portrayed
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| v.画像( portray的过去式和过去分词 )；描述；描绘；描画 | |
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vilified
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| v.中伤，诽谤( vilify的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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resonant
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| adj.(声音)洪亮的，共鸣的 | |
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segregation
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| n.隔离，种族隔离 | |
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segregated
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| 分开的； 被隔离的 | |
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diversifying
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| v.使多样化，多样化( diversify的现在分词 )；进入新的商业领域 | |
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