***BREAKING*** I Am Suing The State of Idaho

I Will Fight For My Readers With Everything I Have

Today, attorneys representing Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster, and Sourcebooks filed a lawsuit challenging Idaho House Bill 710, a law that restricts books in both public and school libraries. I am one of three bestselling author plaintiffs in the lawsuit; the others are Malinda Lo and David Levithan, whose wonderful books you should read immediately. We are joined in the lawsuit by the Author’s Guild, the Donnelly Public Library District, a teacher, two students, and two parents.

Regular readers of this newsletter know that book banning has reached epidemic proportions in schools and libraries across the country, not just in red states but also in blue ones. My book, The 57 Bus, has been challenged or banned in eleven states. This is no accident. Opponents of the First Amendment have targeted education and literature because they know that it is far easier to feed lies to an ignorant populace. We simply cannot allow this censorship to continue unchallenged.

Below is the statement I made to reporters today:

I am a writer of adult fiction, young adult fiction, and children’s literature. I am also a journalist who covers topics like the criminal justice system, the environment, poverty, healthcare, education, social media, and online hate, and contributes to many publications, including the New York Times, Salon, Mother Jones, and Newsweek.

My book, The 57 Bus, has been banned or challenged in several states, including here in Idaho, as well as in Iowa, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, Kansas, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Connecticut, California, Missouri, and Tennessee. The book is a nonfiction narrative that explores the origins and impacts of a real-life incident that took place on a public bus in Oakland, California, in which a young nonbinary person was set on fire by another teenager as a cruel prank.

I spent three years reporting the story. The first fourteen months of reporting was for the New York Times Magazine, and I then expanded that reporting for the book. I was there for dozens of court appearances and other key moments in the narrative, did hours of interviews with the main characters and their friends, families, teachers, and employers, and watched and rewatched hours of surveillance video and police interviews in order to understand every detail of the events. I also dug deep into the issues behind the incident, interviewing experts on topics like juvenile justice, hate crimes, and police procedures.

It is both puzzling and heartbreaking for me to hear that people view my book as inappropriate. There is no sex in my book. There is not even kissing. There are just two teenagers whose worlds collide on the 57 bus: Sasha, an 18-year-old agender white teenager with autism who attends Maybeck, a private high school; and Richard, a 16-year-old Black teenager who attends Oakland High, a public high school. These teenagers were from very different backgrounds, but for 8 minutes every day, they rode the same bus together. On November 4, 2013, one of those bus rides changed both their lives forever.

This story gained international attention; we can’t just pretend it didn’t happen. The teenagers involved were the same age as many of my readers. We must give young people the tools with which to understand what happens in the world and, hopefully, to make better choices.

The book explores themes of justice, gender, discrimination, accountability, redemption and forgiveness. It includes some ballroom dancing. If people are concerned about that then I guess Jane Austen novels should be banned as well.

What people are concerned about, I presume, is that there is a glossary that has definitions of words that explain how people categorize themselves in their romantic inclinations, their gender, and their sexuality. These are words that Sasha found online when searching for the language to use to categorize themself. None is in any way graphic. They include common words like “androgynous” and “asexual” and less common words like “biromantic,” which means that you have romantic feelings for both men and women.

If somebody is offended by the definitions of words, they are going to have a hard time when they learn about dictionaries, which I believe are commonly found in schools. It’s pretty hard to have an education system that doesn't allow the definition of words.

I’ve had many young people write to tell me that my book was the first they had ever read in which they saw their own identities reflected. Reading my book made them feel less alone. According to the NIH/National Institute Health, “researchers have consistently shown that loneliness in children and adolescents confers a risk for poorer well-being” that “may have long-term implications for health and wellness in adulthood.”

Studies have shown that students of various backgrounds feel an increased sense of belonging when reading books that reflect their own experiences and identities as well as the experiences and identities of people unlike them. This is confirmed by the hundreds of letters I have received from students of all types: those who share an identity marker with one of the main characters and those who started the book believing they had nothing in common with either one. My favorite thing is when young people bring my books to a parent or grandparent as a way of starting a conversation about a subject that is important to them.

My goal as a reporter who writes for young people is to create a place where such conversations can happen, where teenagers can come together to talk and think about questions like: What do they believe this world should look like? What are their thoughts about justice? About race, gender, and the world? How should we respond when terrible things happen? These are questions that young people are thinking about already. They have a strong sense of fairness. It is vital that they have discussions about real-life events so that they can develop their own moral frameworks, make sense of the world, and learn how to express themselves and to be heard. These discussions must be based in fact, not on ideology. I'm a journalist. Everything in my book is true and has been rigorously verified and fact checked.

That is my only agenda: to foster understanding and dialogue in order to create educated and engaged citizens of our democracy.

Children and teenagers generally don’t have the ability to pay for books on their own or any idea where to get book recommendations and suggestions tailored to their interests and capacity. They rely on their public, classroom, or school library as their point of access. When educators and librarians in Idaho are prohibited from sharing my books with teenagers, it prevents me from engaging with young readers in that state.

This is why, when I was asked to join this lawsuit, I agreed immediately. I am here to stand up for my readers and for the First Amendment.

More About Idaho’s Book-Banning Law

Idaho’s book-banning law, HB 710, makes it illegal for anyone under 18 to access library books containing “sexual content,” regardless of the work's literary or educational merit. The bill defines “sexual content” in the broadest possible terms, labeling any “homosexual” act as obscene. That’s how they managed to categorize my book—which doesn’t contain any sex in it at all—as obscene; it’s about a trans kid who was the victim of a violent crime on a public bus.

HB 710 doesn’t distinguish between five-year-olds and fifteen-year-olds, classifying a broad swath of literary works as obscene, including classics like Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; and bestsellers like Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Steven Chbosky, and Forever... by Judy Blume.

As our press release explains:

The law not only allows county prosecuting attorneys and the state attorney general to bring claims against any school or public library—it also uniquely incentivizes private citizens to file legal complaints against public libraries or schools through a bounty system. Many libraries, including those in rural areas that are the sole book providers in their communities, cannot afford to be sued because they cannot cover the cost of a defense.

This legal threat has resulted in a chilling effect across the state, with libraries preemptively removing hundreds of books from their shelves. Some libraries have been forced to ban minors from their premises entirely because they are too small to segregate “adult” books. One such case is the Donnelly Library, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, which has restricted access to its building for anyone under 18 unless they are accompanied by a parent or guardian.

Take that in for a moment: libraries where children aren’t allowed, not even for after-school programs. Books for young people sequestered in “Adults Only” sections. Busybodies empowered to stalk the library stacks in search of improper books or improper readers. Librarians hauled into court for doing their jobs. Bookshelves emptied lest their contents offend a single reader.

It’s a nightmare scenario and yet all too real. I am delighted to be fighting back.

I bow to you,

Dashka