Books Under Fire

Trigger Warning: Rape and Sexually Explicit Content

During the Waukee School District board meeting on October 25th, 2021, parent Amanda McClanahan claimed that the Northwest library contains books that promote pedophilia. During the open forum of the school board’s meeting, McClanahan referred to many books with LGBTQ+ themes. The books being reviewed by the school board are titled All Boys Aren’t Blue, Gender-Queer, and Lawn Boy. She displayed a sexually explicit cartoon from the graphic novel Gender-Queer to the board. “This book is available for children as young as fourteen years old,” McClanahan said. On October 28th, the Waukee School District took the three different LGBTQ+ orientated books off the shelves to be reconsidered by a board of Waukee parents.

During the next board meeting, on November 8th, parent Roxy Bohaty claimed to have emailed the authors of all three books. Bohaty read the response from Jonathan Evison, the author of Lawn Boy. “The passage in question is entirely out of context. It features Mike, an adult, revisiting a sexual experimentation that he had in 4th grade with another 4th grader. Sexual experimentation among young people is a well-worn trope in literature.” 

The Waukee board meeting sparked many other arguments from allies to the LGBTQ+ community. Junior Parker Lambert believes that censorship is not useful, because explicit content is already available anyway. Lambert claims, “The way [the parents] are saying the books are pornography is wrong. I can right now Google gay porn and it’s here on the internet on my phone like every other student in this school has.”

These books are not the only sexually explicit books in Northwest’s library. Books like the series A Court of Thorns and Roses and Normal People are also in the library but have not been called for review by the school board. Northwest Librarian Tara Rechkemmer said, “One of our goals for this library would be to have newer books in here. Newer books have representation that is a big goal for our school.” People are wondering, if the books with LGBTQ+ sexually explicit books are being removed, why are the cisgender sexually explicit books staying? Parker Lambert claims that the reconsidered books are important for LGBTQ+ sexual health. “I never learned gay sexual health because they’re not allowed to teach it here, and I had to find out for myself and in all honesty, that’s completely unsafe,” Lambert said. “Having that type of literature here is important to me.” Sophomore Ragan Swanson, however, partially disagrees. She believes that all books containing sexually explicit content in the library should be reconsidered, and it should not be limited to LGBTQ+ books. “It’s a school, and we don’t need this now. Some people like reading [these books], but they can go to the public library,” Swanson said.

Many sexually explicit books are also included in curriculums around the school. In Honors English II specifically, there are a few books that imply or even describe different sexual acts. In A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams, the character Stanley rapes another character, Stella. Williams writes, “All right, let’s have some rough-house!” and “She moans. The hot trumpet and drums sound loudly.” Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Gilgamesh says, “He drew close, Shamhaat touched him on the thigh, touched his penis, and put him inside her. She used her love-arts, she took his breath with her kisses, held nothing back, and showed him what a woman is. For seven days he stayed erect and made love with her.” These books have been a part of the curriculum for many years, but have not raised commotion among parents.

Waukee School District is not the only school district in Iowa with book problems. In the Johnston School District, two books have been subject to reconsideration, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and The Hate U Give. During a Johnston Community School District reconsideration committee meeting on Thursday, November 18th, State Senator Jake Chapman spoke out against teachers defending these books. He says he believed the books to be “obscene.” Chapman said, “If this material was in my school, I’d be going to law enforcement. I would be asking for a criminal investigation.” He posted onto Facebook later that night that, “[he has] legislation being drafted to create [the defending and distribution of books a] new felony offense.” The Johnston committee decided to send material warnings to parents before the lessons.

Dennis Murphey found a book titled Hey, Kiddo: How I lost my mother, found my father, and dealt with family addiction, in his Urbandale junior son’s car. He flipped through the text and found “vulgar language” in the book. The novel has been pulled from the Urbandale High School library with Lawn Boy because of formal requests. On November 15th, Jaret Kozinska, author and illustrator of Hey, Kiddo, publicly posted his letter in response to the Des Moines Register’s article about the book controversy. Kosinska wrote, “I truly empathize with parents who bring up concerns with my book. While they are all within their rights to restrict their own children from certain media, they do not have the right to restrict information and media from the children of others.”

As of the Tenth Street Times’ publishing date (12/13/2021), the books are still up for revision and are not returning to the Northwest Library.