After many years on bookshelves, in 2021 this frank portrayal earned the book a spot on the American Library Association (ALA) Banned Book List for "depictions of abuse and because it was considered to be sexually explicit." The novel re-contextualizes contemporary issues of race, providing a historical framework in a not-so-post-racial America. The characters cross color lines and navigate familial tensions and traumas. This historical context is foregrounded by the fictional love story between an African American boy and a Mexican American girl. Out of Darkness is based on a true-events: In 1937, a natural gas explosion at a school in New London, Texas, killed nearly 300 students and teachers - one of the deadliest school disasters in U.S. She published Out of Darkness in 2015, a year that invoked a national conversation surrounding issues of race, environmental racism, racialized violence and police brutality. Pérez - who is a comparative literature professor at The Ohio State University in addition to having authored three novels - centers her writing on Latin American narratives, making space for young Latino readers to see themselves in her work. This discussion with Ashley Hope Pérez is part of a series of interviews with - and essays by - authors who are finding their books being challenged and banned in the U.S.Īshley Hope Pérez is the author of the award-winning Out of Darkness, a young adult novel that has faced challenges and bans in the U.S.
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