Episode 12: Banned Book Review #2: Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez

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Foreign welcome to another episode of K12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr. K. Fields, former corporate manager turned educational researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators that I had while raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to know how the teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. If you're looking to find out more about current topics in education that could affect you or your children, and the practical applications and actions that you can take to address these issues, then you're in the right place. In today's episode, I will review one of the books from the banned book list called out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez. The intent of this and other monthly book reviews is to examine, to analyze, to investigate why these books books were placed on the banned book list for K 12 public school reading. And now about this book out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez the setting is in New London, Texas in March of 1937. It is an East Texas location. An explosion at a school killed many children, nearly 300 lives in total. The characters in the story include the main character, Naomi, a Mexican girl wash whose full name was James Washington Fuller, an African American young man Beto, who's also known as Roberto or Robbie, and his twin sister Terry, who were the half sister and brother to Naomi, their father, Henry Smith, who they all call Daddy, and Naomi's good friend Tommy Kennethrew. The antagonists in the story are Miranda Gibbler and her father, Zane Gibler. The story is told in flashbacks of the two years prior to the explosion. Naomi's mother, Estrella died in childbirth shortly after the twins were born. She had had four miscarriages before that pregnancy and she was quite the dancer. In fact, that's how she met Henry and later married him. Naomi's biological father actually died from a drowning accident. Henry was her stepfather and the father of the twins who were very smart. They were reading encyclopedias in the first and second grades. Naomi was a young teenager when the explosion occurred, somewhere in middle school or early high school because she was taking home economics classes. Naomi knew that men could take and take and leave the people who loved them wrecked or dead because she had seen the situation firsthand with how her mother died and the number of pregnancies that she had. The chapters are titled after the characters, providing insights, perspectives, and experiences that were highlighted by that particular chapter's character. The girls at the school where Naomi went needed what they called the Mexican girl to have something to talk about, to give them something to do. And the boys needed her to fantasize about having sex with her. The story provided a number of indications in conversation, in dialogue, in actions about the racism toward Mexicans and blacks, which was conveyed in derogatory conversations about Mexicans being slow, greasy, and dirty. Naomi and was became friends after a while and eventually became intimate friends. Although not sexual lovers. They would meet in the hollows of two oak trees in the woods. She made him feel light and free, and he loved her as much as she loved him. Exchanging small gifts and presents as tokens of their appreciation and feelings for each other. Henry began to have some fantasy that maybe Naomi could become his new wife. Naomi then shared this news with Wash. And they decided what it was they could do about it. The story goes on to unfold that the kids in school had complained about headaches in which the janitor, Mr. Stein, thought could be coming from the heaters. He enlisted Watts to check all the heaters in the school, and they did, except for some on the second floor and none of those in the basement. You see, the heaters used gas because this was a gas and oil town. But the school board decided that they paid too much for the gas. So they started leaching gas, free gas from the system. That gas was then used for the heaters in the school. One of the children that was killed in that explosion was Carrie, Phaedo's twin. He was distraught, as you can imagine. The parents and everyone were just so upset about the number of children that had died in the blast. And the people in the town wanted answers as to why the glass happened. They thought that Mr. Zane Gibbler, a lady member of the school board, would know. He was a gruff man and really disliked quite a few people. And he led them to talk to his daughter Miranda, who loved to gossip. She put out a rumor that Wass was the one responsible for the explosion. The men then formed a mob and headed over to Egypt Town, where Wasp lived in the community of other African Americans at that time. They wanted justice for the children they lost in the explosion. The mob set Wass and his family's house on fire and beat Wash and his father, the preacher, Pastor Tom, stopped the mob from lynching Wash and his father, Wass. Naomi and Beto headed out of town to Tyler, Texas, in a car with wass parents and his sister Peggy to catch a train to Mexico. But before they were to leave town, Naomi had to go back to Henry's house to get Dado's cat and the money that she'd been saving for the trip. She made a noise upon exiting from the house that awakened Henry. He followed her and caught up with the waiting family in the car. He had a shotgun and a revolver with him, and he pointed the revolver at Wash. Henry made Beto tie Wash to a tree. And he proceeded to beat and rape Naomi. He then also proceeded to severely beat Wash. Henry told Beto, his son, about 7 or 8 years old, to shoot Wash with the shotgun. And if he didn't, Henry would shoot Naomi. Beto couldn't shoot Wash. They'd been great friends. And so Henry shot Naomi in the thigh. Then Henry shot Wasps and Beto shot Henry. Beto was the only one who made the trip to San Antonio with the foot of the family. Where they would drop him off with his grandparents. As he was riding in the back of the car, Beto made a mental note that the dead are not saints, but the dead are ours. We carry them with us like it's our job. And maybe it is. Beto continued to excel in school in San Antonio, graduating with honors from high school and attending the University of Texas at Austin, where he was an English major. The story of events that happened were told in a San Antonio paper, the article of which Beto saved. The article indicated that not only the number of lives that were lost during the explosion, but that Naomi, one of the survivors of the explosion, was raped and beaten by Wash. Naomi's stepfather, Henry Smith, was so distraught that in his attempt to rescue his stepdaughter, a gun was drawn and accidentally discharged, killing both Naomi and Wash. The article referred to him by his full name of James Washington Fuller. There were no witnesses to these events. And from the evidence at the scene, Smith, who was crazed with briefing raids, turned the gun on himself. The article indicated that the police would have no further investigation to be conducted in this matter. Fato knew the article did not describe the real events on that fateful night. He knew he had to tell the real version of the story about the family who was happy in the beginning. For a while before the rules found them, before the terrible price was extracted for their transgressions and for the crossing of lines, as well as for friendship and love. My overall impressions of the book are. The 1937 New London School explosion is still on record as one of the deadliest school disasters in the United States. The rest of the fictional story was created by the authority. The reading of this book really captivated my attention, drawing me in with the questions and sometimes expectations of what would happen next. The book addresses a number of historical precedents that exist for the racism, sexual abuse, violence against minorities and other distressing factors that were part of life of citizens in this country in East Texas in the 1930s. This book did a good job in exposing the narratives that might otherwise go unacknowledged. It highlighted the three part segregation system that separated whites, coloreds, as they call them, and Mexican children into separate schools. It brought to light the many lives that have been largely excluded from historical accounts because certain communities didn't deem their lives noteworthy in newspapers or any other authoritative or reliable sources. I can see why this book was on the banned book list because it forces others to look at themselves and to come to terms with some of the ugliness of American history. The book provides ample subject matter for which a high school English teacher can delve into a variety of topics and discussions with their students, some of those topics which are infrequently addressed. It is definitely a book worth reading, a book by a Latina author, Ashley Hope Perez, that I hope will whet the appetite for other readers to begin an exploration of the lived stories of those who are often not spotlighted in the history of the United States. If this is the type of subject matter and discussion that resonates with you, please subscribe to my podcast on whatever service you're listening to this. Also, I'd love to hear from you, so please leave me a comment or you and share this episode with anyone you think would find it valuable. Tell your friends, your family, and your community about my podcast. Thanks for listening today. I hope you'll come back for more K12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle. By the way, if you have an urgent question about a current issue or a specific topic that you'd like me to cover and explore, shoot me a quick email@timberationthrougheducation.com to let me know what your question is. Until next time, aim to learn something new every day.

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