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Independently owned & published by I heard the county school board recently turned down requests by some Northern Guilford High School (NGHS) parents to restrict two sexually graphic books in the school’s library.
I remember the debate last spring about one of the books, “Salvage the Bones.” What’s the deal with the second book?
We checked with the Guilford County Board of Education and you are correct. “Salvage the Bones” and “Life is Funny” remain as reading options for NGHS students despite objections by some parents that the books are pornographic and inappropriate for teenagers.
The board voted in late November to retain “Salvage the Bones” as an option on the school’s AP English reading list. In a second vote Dec. 8, the board decided to keep “Life is Funny” in the school’s library.
The two votes by the board represented a third failure by parents to limit the availability of the two books to students. First, an advisory committee at the school and, second, a school district-wide committee decided the books don’t meet standards for removal – which would include that they are “educationally unsuitable,” “pervasively vulgar” and inappropriate for the age, maturity or grade level of students.
Parents objected to sexually graphic scenes in the two coming-ofage novels. Jesmyn Ward’s “Salvage the Bones” depicts a poor Black teenage girl in rural Mississippi in the days before and after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. In “Life is Funny,” author E.R. Frank tells interconnected stories about teens growing up in Brooklyn.
After reading a sexually graphic scene from “Life is Funny” marked with vulgarity, NGHS parent Jim Morris asked the board whether “you would watch this as a movie with your 14-year-old or read it out loud? Stories can be told and understood without going into such graphic detail.”
Morris recommended Northern Guilford create an opt-in list for “all questionable materials in the media center,” with such books kept in a separate area. At the start of the school year, parents would be required to sign an opt-in form giving their minor children access to the materials.
“I’m not here to argue, fight, start a lawsuit or ban books,” he said. “I’m here to help come to an agreement on protecting minors, protecting parents’ rights and working with the school on this situation.”
Some board members pushed back during the two meetings.
“Life is Funny” is about “lived experiences; sex and sexual contact is lived experiences in teenagers,” District 5 school board member Deborah Napper, who represents NGHS, said during the Dec. 8 meeting.
District 1 board member Dianne Bellamy Small added, “We can’t hide life.”
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