Another LGBTQ Author Uninvited from School Book Talk

Just days after author Robin Stevenson said she was uninvited from a recent school talk because her newest book discusses Harvey Milk, Lesléa Newman, author of the classic Heather Has Two Mommies, writes that she was uninvited from a visit to two different schools because of her LGBTQ-inclusive books.

Newman writes in “The Uninvited,” at Nerdy Book Club, that her publisher had set up several school visits at a few yeshivas (Jewish day schools) in Brooklyn, so that she could discuss her newest picture book, Gittel’s Journey: An Ellis Island Story. This book is based on her own family history and does not contain any LGBTQ content. For her talk, Newman, who was born in Brooklyn and is Jewish herself, knew to dress modestly out of respect for the Orthodox Jewish community she was visiting; she wasn’t trying to make waves. Her publicist contacted her before the visit, though, saying that the schools wanted to know if she was planning to discuss only her Jewish children’s books. Newman writes:

A warning bell sounded in my head. I assured my publicist that yes, my plan was to talk about my Jewish-themed books only, and not mention any of my other books, including Heather Has Two Mommies and Sparkle Boy, because #1, those titles were not relevant to the subject at hand, and #2, I suspected that was the real question behind the question I was being asked.

The Friday before the Monday of her first visit, however, two schools canceled her event, pleading various excuses. Newman isn’t convinced by them. She’s faced discrimination and censorship before and knows what it looks like—indeed, conservatives’ reaction to Heather was the first major outcry against LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books. “As the author of Heather Has Two Mommies, I’ve been treated less than kindly many times. But to be told in 2019, the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, that I am not fit to be around children, particularly stings,” she writes.

Stevenson, similarly, had not even planned to discuss the LGBTQ characters in her book during her talk, she asserted in a tweet and in an interview Monday in the Chicago Tribune. Like Newman, too, she is skeptical of the school’s excuse for cancelling her visit. The Illinois school district issued a statement claiming it was cancelled because the school did not properly communicate to parents “information about the content of the book being presented and promoted by the author” and that “parents/guardians were not provided a sufficient opportunity to review the information and determine whether they wanted their child to participate in the program.” Stevenson doesn’t think that rings true. She told me via text message after the district issued its statement that she has heard privately from district employees who said they were told the talk was “too controversial.” She also noted:

I have heard from parents whose children had the opportunity to pre-order the book in advance of my talk, so it seems to me that there was ample opportunity for parents to read about the book on which the presentation was based. I do not think that the fact the one of the activists in the book was gay should require a specific parental notification—unless the school also plans to warn parents whenever they talk about historical figures that were heterosexual.

[UPDATE, November 13, 2019, 3:50 p.m.: Stevenson today tweeted an image of the flyer that went out to parents before her talk, and which clearly shows Harvey Milk on the cover, waving a rainbow flag. It also mentions both Milk and Janet Mock as being among the people profiled in the book.]

As Heidi Stevens of the Chicago Tribune noted, too, even if the school’s stated reason for cancelling the visit was true, “It’s hard for me to imagine a policy more antithetical to the very spirit of education.” People need to hear the stories and experiences “of people who live and look and love and worship in ways that don’t mirror and reinforce what we already know” while at the same time, “all of us need and deserve to see some of ourselves reflected back to us.” She concludes, “A school that refuses to afford its students those opportunities, those mind- and world-broadening skills, is doing those students a major disservice.”

LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books continue to face opposition in schools, however. A majority of titles in the American Library Association’s (ALA’s) latest annual list (2018) of the Top 11 Most Challenged Books were challenged or banned because of their LGBTQ content. Two of the books were also burned. This past May, too, some parents were outraged after a teacher in Hanover County, Virginia, read Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag, by Rob Sanders, to a second-grade classroom after one child was called “gay” in a negative way. Other parents supported the teacher’s decision to read it. Unfortunately, Principal Terri Keck responded with a letter to parents saying they should have been notified about the book before it was read, per the district’s policy on controversial or sensitive material. That sounds very much like the Illinois district’s excuse. And just this past week, too, the Washington Post reported on a different Virginia school district that is facing challenges to LGBTQ-inclusive books that are part of a broader diversity initiative.

I hope you’ll go read Stevenson’s open letter to the school district if you haven’t already, since she elaborates on why such challenges are harmful to students. Another useful read is this September piece by Alex Gino, author of George, the most-challenged book last year. (H/t to Stevenson for mentioning this piece on Twitter.) Gino notes that responding “must be great for sales” to authors whose works have been challenged overlooks the real damage such challenges cause. They observe, “While most direct challenges fail in that books aren’t taken off the shelves, they make it easier for soft censorship to creep in, like when books aren’t purchased for fear of possible controversy, are shelved in a restricted area, or are left out of relevant book talks to avoid potential pushback.”

That seems relevant to both Stevenson and Newman’s recent experiences. Newman concludes her piece, though, with a rather satisfying anecdote from an earlier visit to a different school that was hesitant about the LGBTQ content of some of her works. I’ll let you go read it for yourself, but suffice it to say, the kids themselves are what really give me hope about all this. Let’s hope we adults start to listen.

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