A handful of angry parents spoke at last week’s school board meeting to express their outrage over a “disgusting” book that some ninth graders are required to read in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
I wanted to know what they were so upset about, so I decided to read it.
The book is called “The Girl Who Fell from the Sky.” Set in the 1980s, it tells the story of Rachel, a young biracial girl who is sent to live with her grandmother in Portland after her mother and siblings tragically die.
Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a Black father, spent most of her life in Europe, where, it’s implied, the color of her skin never mattered much. In Portland, however, she discovers that it does. Society is divided into two categories — Black and white — and she doesn’t quite fit in either one.
“I learn that black people don’t have blue eyes. I learn that I am black. I have blue eyes,” one chapter reads.
The book does contain “mature content,” which is what parents seem to be focusing their objections on.
One parent read from a scene in which Rachel, the main character, is raped — pressured into a sexual encounter she didn’t want to have because the boy called her “beautiful” and she didn’t think she was allowed to tell him no.
“Please explain to me how this is not pornographic material being forced upon students in our school system,” the parent said. He then proceeded to read an excerpt of the book “suggesting racial stereotypes.”
Brooke Weiss, chairperson of the group Moms for Liberty in Mecklenburg County, also spoke against the book, saying “the innocence of our children [is] being taken away so fast.”
“If you want to teach about racism, there are books that don’t sexualize our children. There are no cultures that this is relevant to where we promote teenage sex and normalize it,” Weiss said at last week’s meeting.
A scene depicting rape is hardly promoting or normalizing sex. It also isn’t a very long scene — only a few pages, then it’s never mentioned again — nor is it especially graphic. But it does teach an important lesson about rape culture and consent, and the fact that society wrongly tells women that every time a man gives them attention, they are supposed to like it.
When I was in ninth grade, we read “To Kill a Mockingbird” in English class. We took turns reading it out loud and our teacher told us there was no need to censor the n-word, which bothered me because I knew it was wrong. I liked the book, but I think I would have learned more from something that challenged the way I saw the world by showing me an entirely different perspective.
“The Girl Who Fell from the Sky” is an example of a book that does just that. And unlike “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the book shows that racism doesn’t have to be violent or even intentional in order to be harmful. After Rachel’s grandmother takes her to get her hair relaxed, white people suddenly start telling her she’s beautiful. Later in the book, a male love interest, who is white, calls Rachel his “mocha girl” and revels in the fact that he’s “never done it with a black girl before.”
“You’re different anyway, you know? It’s like you’re black but not really black,” he tells her.
As with the many other book banning debates happening across the country, the outrage over “The Girl Who Fell from the Sky” isn’t just about a book. It’s another example of parents wanting their kids to see the world the way they want them to see it, as opposed to the way it actually is. But the idea that one can choose when to learn about the bad parts of the world is an inherently privileged concept. The only people who get to make that choice are the people who aren’t already living it.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Paige Masten is a Charlotte Observer opinion writer
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