A Texas school district has removed seven more books from its student book club reading lists, the nonprofit group PEN America announced in a news release.
Leander Independent School District, which serves students in Austin, Cedar Park, and Leander, removed books including Jacqueline Woodson’s Red at the Bone, Nikki Grimes’ Ordinary Hazards, and Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House. The majority of the books removed are by authors of color.
The school district made headlines in April after it announced it would remove books such as a graphic novel adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s Y: The Last Man, and suspend books including Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak and Amy Reed’s The Nowhere Girls.
Several authors of the affected books sent an open letter to the school district protesting the decision, writing, “We are particularly alarmed and disappointed to see that so many of these targeted books feature authors or characters who are women, LGBTQIA+ individuals, or people of color.”
PEN America’s director of free expression and education, Jonathan Friedman, criticized the school district over the most recent book removals, saying, “This is a sad day for literature and for students’ freedom to learn.”
“It is disheartening to see a school district closing off avenues for learning and engagement across lines of difference,” Friedman said. “Not only is the removal of these books harmful to the literary community as a whole, it also contributes to the further minimization of the issues that people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals face.”
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
