A Texas county school district has agreed to pull a book from two middle-school libraries after a parent complained about the sexually explicit content of the books.
The dust-up became public last week, when Kara Bell, a mother and former candidate for the Lake Travis Independent School District board, read aloud from the book in question during a board meeting. The district serves the Austin area, arguably the most liberal part of Texas.
Bell told the board the book, a novel called “Out of Darkness,” by Ashley Hope Pérez, refers to “p—y,” or “the idea of p—y,” anal sex and other gratuitous material.
“Take her out back, we boys figured, then hands on the t—ies,” Bell read.
“Put it in her coin box, put it in her cornhole, grab a hold of that braid, rub that Calico,” Bell continued, telling the board they could find that material on page 39.
Bell told the board she had to Google the term “cornhole,” because she had the popular beanbag game in her backyard. That’s not what the book referred to, she added. “It means to have anal sex,” said Bell.
She then cut loose.
“I do not want my children learning about anal sex in middle school,” she said. “I’ve never had anal sex. I don’t want to have anal sex. I don’t want my kids having anal sex.”
“I want you to start focusing on education, and not public health,” Bell continued.
At that point, her mic was cut and the chairman began calling the name of the next speaker.
A school district spokesman told the local NBC affiliate that “Out of Darkness” was temporarily removed and is being reviewed to see if it conforms with the district’s policies.
“A district possesses significant discretion to determine the content of its school libraries,” the spokesman said, per school board policy. “A district must, however, exercise its discretion in a manner consistent with the First Amendment.”
Continuing, he said the district “shall not” remove books “for the purpose of denying students access to ideas with which the district disagrees.” Yet, the district “may remove materials because they are pervasively vulgar or based solely upon the educational suitability of the books in question.”
According to the local media, the novel shares the tale of a love affair between a black boy and a Mexican-American girl who come together in 1930s east Texas.
Perez, the author, said she hopes people “are kind of hungry for stories from people on the margins of history.”
Jonathan Freidman, of the left-wing literary group Pen America, defended the novel, telling the NBC affiliate that it is a “disservice” to students “to pretend books that deal explicitly with sex or sexual assault are in some way a threat to young people.”
“This is about having access for young people to a wide variety of literature that people from different backgrounds are reflected in,” he added.
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