There are ways that books as lifelines are being questioned.  As articulated a few weeks ago on YA Wednesday, our newsfeeds are barbed wires instead of lifelines, populated with angry parents challenging books that each of us have come to value and love--books that have saved our students’ lives.

However,  Meg Medina, the 2019 Summit’s keynote, wrote, “Stop the Madness: Banning Books is Not the Answer'' on censorship: 
To pull books from a school library because of the discomfort they create in adults is a recipe for disaster. It erodes the trust young people have in the adults in their lives and pushes them to secrecy. It undermines the studied opinion of professional librarians and educators. It supports a false idea that there is one version of life that is acceptable. And, it denigrates the work of authors who are brave enough to name experiences that are difficult and real.

Ashley Hope Perez, a keynote speaker at the 2020 UNLV Summit has aptly warned us that “attacks on books are proxy wars against people that some wish didn’t exist.”  Laurie Halse Anderson, a keynote speaker at the 2018 UNLV Summit, has stated,“Censorship is the child of fear, and the father of ignorance. Our children cannot afford to have the truth of the world withheld from them. They need us to be brave enough to give them great books so that they can grow into the strong women and men that we need them to be.”

​We are thrilled to welcome Rupsy and Alice to the blog today so that they can share their ideas for teaching social justice with young adult literature.  Especially since COVID-19 began, it has been difficult to connect with others, yet students' development of empathy is crucial. We must find ways to help students read meaningfully and understand  different points of view.  Planning for these goals, and using young adult literature, can help!

A bit about today's authors: Rupsy Bajwa was part of the founding cohort of residency teachers for the Kern High Teacher Residency Program, and is currently finishing her third year as an English teacher at Ridgeview High School.  She is also a member of California Association of Teachers of English. ​Dr. Alice Hays received her Ph.D. in English Education from Arizona State University in 2017.  Prior to embarking on her PhD career, she was a secondary English teacher in Arizona for 18 years. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Teacher Education at CSU Bakersfield.  

​Another book is The Border by Steve Schafer, which is about four teens whose family is murdered by criminals, and their only chance at surviving is to flee Mexico. Students are loving the story, and have frequently asked to continue reading the book (which is always music to our ears).  Interestingly, several students have opened up and shared stories of their own family members who have had to cross the border for their own safety.  Ms. Bajwa feels as though the book is providing a sense of safety for those students, as they had not previously shared their stories with her. ​

Lessons for Writers

One such book that deserves a close reading is Boston Globe-Horn Book nonfiction winner and National Book Award long-lister Paula Yoo’s From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement. (How is it possible that I–Angie–as a young teen at the time of Chin’s brutal murder by Ronald Ebens, a white man, had never heard of this tragedy and travesty of justice–one even that the White House had commemorated decades later?)

Yoo deftly draws the reader in with poetic style, juxtaposition and suspense. She shares a comment from Ebens regarding the outcome of the trial: “I told my wife that morning she might as well put a stamp on my ass ‘cause they were going to be sending me away,” and when the sentence was announced, he commented, “[Y]ou could have knocked me over with a feather” (Yoo, 2021, p. 62.) While the tone of the comments can’t be determined with certainty, the everyday colloquialisms reinforce the lightness of the sentence:

“Probation. Three thousand dollars. 
That was it. 
[…] 
They were free…for now (Yoo, 2021, p. 62). 

Yoo’s simple but highly effective use of short sentences, italics, and paragraph breaks pack a punch, particularly as juxtaposed against the longer sentences and seemingly light tone of Ebens’ words. 

The remainder of the book details the suspenseful “for now”–reinforced by the ellipsis–and immerses the reader in the unspeakable heartache of Chin’s family and  fianceé, and the battle for a sentence commensurate with the horrific beating resulting in his death. 
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​It’s not surprising that Speak–finalist for the National Book award, winner of a Printz honor–persists as a bestselling, high-interest book.  It’s also a frequently-challenged book. In fact, by 2020, Speak was the “fourth most banned and challenged book in the United States ‘because it was thought to contain a political viewpoint and was claimed to be biased against male students, and for the novel’s inclusion of rape and profanity.’”  

Some readers connect with Melinda due to her social problems; what high-schooler doesn’t feel, at some point, like the world is against them, that their parents don’t understand them, that they have no friends and that their teachers are clueless?  Other readers connect with Melinda on an even deeper, more personal level: she has been sexually assaulted, and no one knows. Melinda is not alone: one in every six women will be victimized by sexual violence. As a survivor of sexual assault, I found myself frustrated, yet vindicated by Melinda’s situation. I understood all too well why she wasn’t telling her parents, why her parents failed to notice what was wrong, and how the school didn’t provide proper support. While my situation was not exactly the same as Melinda’s, reading Speak coincided with my decision to seek the help of a therapist 25 years after my own assault.  Speak saved my life. It allowed me to grieve what was lost and move forward with joy.

In this Printz Honor book told from multiple perspectives, Perez describes East Texas in 1937, when the town revolves around the oil industry, school resources are directed toward white kids, and racial lines are rarely crossed.  Even with such division, Mexican American Naomi Vargas and African American Wash Fuller fall deeply in love. While Wash has a supportive family, Naomi faces sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather and also serves as the main caregiver for her twin siblings. When a natural gas leak causes the third-deadliest disaster in Texas’s history, townspeople are looking for someone to blame, with tragic consequences.

Out of Darkness is honest and graphic, and portrays a star-crossed love story that many readers cannot shake.  In describing Wash and Naomi’s love, Perez describes the kind of love that our young readers long for themselves. It also holds readers to difficult historical truths which, despite their value, some readers may find troubling. It employs a historically accurate vernacular which has been famously challenged and then circulated on TikTok. Perez has responded to critics and continues to advocate for the right to read this noteworthy book.   

​Jackson is a master of suspenseful, turn-on-a-dime plots featuring believable–but unreliable–narrators.  In Monday’s Not Coming, Claudia searches in vain for her best friend, Monday Charles.  She needs Monday so that she can face bullies and a learning disability, but Monday is nowhere to be found.  Readers learn that Monday lives in gentrification-challenged, project housing and has an abusive mother. Despite Claudia’s persistent questions, her parents, teachers, and friends cannot tell her where Monday is.  In fact, they cannot even remember when they last saw her.  Eventually we learn that Monday has been murdered and stashed in a freezer. When Claudia learns of Monday’s fate, her understanding of events becomes fuzzy and her narration breaks down, leaving readers shocked and confused, but still engaged.  After all, regardless of sequencing and details, main truths persist: Monday was Black.  Monday was a girl.  She lived in the projects and was loved by Claudia.  She was brutally murdered and hidden, but no one seemed to even notice she was gone.  Monday was forgotten.

Monday’s Not Coming has been challenged  by parents calling it “dirty” and saying that its depiction of abuse makes them “uncomfortable.”  Yet Jackson does not desire comfortable stories. The purpose of this story is to shake us up, to bring cognitive dissonance, to motivate us to do something. Monday’s Not Coming narrates the “disproporionate media attention on missing white girls and women.” Those being “triggered” by the book  have the privilege of being triggered by the book rather than actual events in their own lives–all the more reason why we must read books about the forgotten, lest we forget.

All American Boys has been banned for its apparent profanity, drug use, alcoholism, anti-police views, and divisive content.  In fact, in 2020, it was in the third position on the American Library Association’s list of most commonly challenged books in the U.S. This text speaks to current issues, however, and has also won critical recognition, having received a 2016 Coretta Scott King Author Honor, a Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature, and the 2016 Walden.  

In this book, a young, gifted, and black young 16-year-old, Rashad, is mistaken for a shoplifter and is brutally beaten by a white cop. The beating is witnessed by several members of Rashad’s community and is also recorded on a video camera, and one witness–in particular, a white, male athlete named Quinn–must decide which side he’ll take. On one side is the cop who has been his father figure his entire life, and who is also guilty of police brutality.  On the other hand is his classmate Rashad, who must begin to put his life back together.  As Rashad’s and Quinn’s stories are told in tandem by Kiely and Reynolds, readers must take sides, just as the characters do. Such positioning brings representation: there are those who experience racism, those who may wish to take action, and those who are immobilized by apathy.  This book is a welcome challenge to the apathy we witness  regarding racial justice. Beyond being a current, relevant text, and one that encourages stance-taking, this text is rich with opportunities for discussion.  It can also be supplemented with op-eds, media clips, and activities that mobilize.  Given the hate crimes that have plagued our nation, we must help students relate to the injustices of their peers, discuss their part in systemic racism, consider positive solutions, and take action in ways that bring meaningful social change.

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Holly Sheppard Riesco is currently a doctoral student at the University of Arkansas in the Curriculum and Instruction program in English Education. Prior to entering the doctoral program, she taught secondary ELA for 15 years. Her research interest is in how contemporary children and YA literature can be integrated with students’ lived literacies in the ELA classroom. She co-authored Adolescent Realities: Engaging Students in SEL through Young Adult Literature (Rowman & Littlefield) that will be out later in 2021. She can be contacted at hriesco@uark.edu.
 
Christian Z. Goering is professor and co-coordinator of English education at the University of Arkansas, where he leads the Northwest Arkansas Writing Project. His scholarship explores how English teachers take up music in their teaching, especially student songwriting. Literacy education policy, as it affects our abilities to engage innovative practice, is a secondary interest. He’s currently past chair of the English Language Arts Teacher Educators.

Padma Venkatraman is the author of BORN BEHIND BARS, THE BRIDGE HOME, A TIME TO DANCE, ISLAND"S END and CLIMBING THE STAIRS. Her novels have, in total, garnered numerous honors, received over twenty-two starred reviews, and won several awards such as a WNDB Walter Dean Myers Award, SCBWI Golden Kite Award, Crystal Kite Award, Nerdy Book Award, Julia Ward Howe Boston Authors Club Award, Malka Penn Honor, ASTAL RI Book of the Year Award, two South Asia Book Awards, two Paterson Prizes, and more. Visit her at www.padmavenkatraman.com and follow her on twitter (@padmatv) or ig/fb (@venkatraman.padma), and learn more about her latest novel, BORN BEHIND BARS, at https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/647196/born-behind-bars-by-padma-venkatraman/. ​

​Jenny Cameron Paulsen, a twenty-seven year teaching veteran, educates middle schoolers in American History, World Studies, and English in Cedar Falls, Iowa. A lifelong reader, historian, and storyteller, she loves podcasts, reading aloud, design thinking, genealogy, knitting, and geeking out about early America. She wants to take every dance and art class she can find. She has served as the conference chair and president of the Iowa Council of Teachers of English, as well as a reader for the Amelia Walden Award committee. She is currently trying to figure out how to teach online.

Dr. Paul E. Binford is an associate professor of secondary social studies teacher education at Mississippi State University. He is also the co-director of Teaching with Primary Sources: Mississippi. His scholarly work on the history of the social studies and cross-curricular connections has appeared in journals, such as Theory and Research in Social Education, Curriculum History, and the ALAN Review. He is currently working on a book project about the Pacific Mission and the Rescue Reunion.