Number of challenges: 50

Challenged for: depictions of abuse, claimed to be sexually explicit

Perez has written a novel of relationships and societal values set in Texas, USA, in the time surrounding the 1937 New London School explosion which killed over 300 students and teachers. The catastrophe caused by natural gas leak is well documented within Texas history. The socio-economic environment of racism, sexism, segregation and abuse are not so widely documented and it is these themes upon which Perez has woven her story.

There are several protagonists from whose point of view the narrative is told. Naomi, the seventeen-year-old senior high school student of Mexican-American descent, her two twin siblings Beto and Cari, Henry the twins father and Naomi’s stepfather, and Wash, an African-American senior student who attends the local New England Coloured school. A friendship begins between Wash and the children, resulting in a relationship with Naomi.

Perez steadily builds an undercurrent of frustration, alienation and simmering tensions. There are many layers of overt racism and purposive partitioning of community. In having a Caucasian father Beto and Cari pass for the same, although their mother was Mexican. Naomi’s skin colour defines her heritage, thereby exposing her to bullying and stereotyping for being a female and also a “Mexican Woman”, perceived as inferior, immoral and promiscuous by ”The Gang”, a group of local Caucasian adolescent boys. She experiences constant discrimination from local business owners, fellow students and members of Henry’s community whose xenophobia originates from their racism and fear of “other” populaces changing the status quo.

There are references to incest and sexual abuse, particularly a scene where “The Gang” threaten barbaric assault on  Naomi. Perez responds to a parental complaint, a “loosely connected tirade” citing brief inclusion of the degrading sexual act as necessary to portray in abridged form the continual abuse suffered by the young woman. “I didn’t create those conditions nor do I endorse them, but in writing a historical novel, I needed to represent them”, Perez (cited by Lerner, n.d., para 4). These themes are significant to the story and are written tactfully without sensation.

Not surprisingly the text is not popular with MFL. Perez displays empathy toward her would-be persecutors who “focus overwhelmingly on books that feature or are written by non-White, queer, and otherwise non-dominant people (Lerner, n.d., para 6) in that they challenge traditional and conventional moral principles. She offers advice to community sectors fighting to retain resources that deconstruct existing circumstances – to members of the information profession: provide a supportive environment with secondary resources and navigation guides; for teachers: anticipate conflicts of interest and utilise comparisons with previously accepted literature; for parents: read conflictive texts with YA, discuss and traverse difficult subjects together, and for affected students: find allies within your community, school and library and persevere to be heard.