Friends and family congratulated me, book sales bounced a little and a 10-year-old title was suddenly under discussion by people who had never read it. I had been awarded literary recognition of a peculiar kind, one that brought me no euphoria. Along with six other books opposed by conservative parents in a wealthy school district near Dallas, my book “The Working Poor: Invisible in America,” a nonideological portrayal of lives near the bottom, was suspended from the English curriculum at Highland Park High School, where it had been used in advanced placement classes.
I never know what to say to people whose books have been banned, but I guess "Congratulations" will do. Since your journalistic work is, as the saying goes, a first draft of history, we can assume that Texas Republicans agree with Lenin that reality is ideological. They just choose to ignore reality and to bar others from reading about it.
ReplyDelete