Over the past few months, her book has been banned or put on challenge lists to be reviewed for removal in at least three school districts in Texas, where Perez was born and spent much of her life living.Ī video from September of a mother of a middle school student in Austin, Texas, challenging the book due to a few vulgar sentences about sexual activity has gone viral, with talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel playing the clip.

Now as the annual Banned Books Week comes to an end Saturday, her book finds itself at the center of controversy. The moment met the book.” 'Out of Darkness' at the center of banned book controversyįast forward to 2021 and the political and social climate around the United States has changed, Perez said. “It was uncontroversial for six years,” said Perez, a 37-year-old mother of two and assistant professor in the department of comparative studies at Ohio State University. “In 2015, the Black Lives Matter movement had just taken off and people were ready to grapple with these issues. Instead, though, the book quickly garnered success, winning a number of national awards and receiving favorable reviews. Maybe “Out of Darkness” would face a bit of backlash in the beginning, the North Side resident recalled thinking. It does, after all, focus on non-white characters and themes of racism and segregation while depicting the tragic 1937 school gas explosion in New London, Texas, that killed roughly 300 students and teachers. When Ashley Perez published her third young adult novel in 2015, she never imagined it would be very controversial.

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