Banned Books Week: Ashley Hope Pérez’s “Out of Darkness”

October 1–7, 2023, is Banned Books Week, a week that “was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in libraries, bookstores, and schools.” Last year, Ashley Hope Pérez’s Out of Darkness was the 9th most challenged book. Out of Darkness debuted in 2015, and it went seven years without a ban or challenge. However, amidst the spate of book challenges that arose in 2021, Out of Darkness became a target, being banned, as Pérez herself notes, “in at least 29 school districts across the country” as of December 2022. This semester, I included Out of Darkness in my Banned Books syllabus for a few reasons. One of the main reasons, for me, was the proximity of the New London school explosion in 1937 to my hometown in Northeast Louisiana. As I read Pérez’s novel, I kept thinking about the region that raised me.

We know, as Pérez points out as well, that the argument that a book contains “sexually explicit content” sits on the surface of book bannings, yet “[w]hat distinguishes the targeted titles, though, is not their sexual content but that they overwhelmingly center the experiences of BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.” This move excludes individuals not just from the school library but it sends “a powerful message of exclusion” not just saying that these books don’t belong in the library but that anyone who has the same background or identity doesn’t belong in the public square.

The challenges and bannings of Out Of Darkness began when Kara Bell spoke at a school board meeting in Austin, Texas in 2021. Bell took the meeting, which was focused on COVID-19, off the rails during her public comment period. She read a passage from Out of Darkness where “The Gang,” which is embodied consciousness of the community, discusses sexual acts with Naomi. Her male classmates see her and talk about the ways that want to sexually assault her. Instead of focusing on the boy’s comments on sexually assaulting Naomi in various ways, Bell zeroes in on the use of the phrase “put it in her cornhole.” Bell says she had to look up what “cornhole” means, and she rants about the fact that she does not want her kids to learn about anal sex, and she adamantly proclaims that she has never had anal sex. Whether or not Bell has had anal sex is neither here nor there. The main point rests on…