Not by the Book

Sherman Alexie had been surprised at the lack of challenges to his celebrated young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Last year, on the heels of the novel winning a National Book Award, USA Today columnist Whitney Matheson asked Alexie: “I wondered if there might be some controversy when the book came out. Has there been anything?”

“No! I’m so shocked,” Alexie replied. “There’s chronic masturbation and inappropriate erections, and there’s some cussing ... and nothing. As far as the book getting banned or even challenged, nothing yet. Part of it, I think people are afraid to ban a book written by an Indian about an Indian. I think they probably worry that they’ll feel racist.”

Not, for the moment anyway, in Prineville, Ore., where a parent made copies of several pages he found objectionable and took them to the December school board meeting. The board, hearing only the parent’s excerpts, ordered copies of Part-Time Indian removed immediately from freshman English.

Crook County High School Principal Jeff Golden was both funny and ironic when he told The Inlander, “Here we are, the Crook County Cowboys, banning a book written by an Indian.”

Alexie sounded astonished, but said he has already mailed a box of books to the Crook County Library. “It’s hilarious because I just got an offer from Tennessee that they are picking the book for the whole state,” he says. “It’s not like Tennessee is the center of all things liberal. This book is so mainstream.”

Prineville father of three Hank Moss and Crook County School Board Chairman Jeff Landaker didn’t find anything mainstream about teenage characters in the novel discussing masturbation and erections. Moss called the novel “pretty trashy” after he began reading his freshman son’s copy recently.

News accounts of Moss’ complaint and the board’s action spawned a wave of insult and mockery aimed at Prineville on the Internet.

The knee-jerk reaction online, however, is quite similar to the school board’s knee-jerk action in that broad assumptions and heated statements were made with scant facts.

“I stand by the simple fact we pulled the book and did not follow our own policy. That sets up a lot of bad things,” Golden says.

The policy is designed, Golden says, to cool heated rhetoric.

First, the parent should have gone to the teacher or administrators to complain about class materials. Second, if the parent chose to pursue the complaint instead of opting for an alternate book, a review committee would be formed.

Lastly, the Crook County School Board should not have acted until a committee of parents, teachers and administrators discussed the complaint. “No parent or group of parents has the right to determine reading material for any other than their own children,” Golden says.

Belatedly, and clearly stinging at the online criticism, the school district is following its policy.

“Are you still calling about that? That is such old news,” interim Superintendent Rich Schulz says.

“I guarantee you are wrong off the get-go. Typical news media,” board chairman Landaker says. “I’m getting done. I am getting tired of people calling me about this.

“The book has not been jerked from the school district, the book has not been jerked from the library. You can come down to our library and read a copy of the book. All we did was suspend an assignment,” Landaker says.

“The truth is you can’t ban a book in this country,” says Spokane novelist Chris Crutcher. Crutcher writes young adult fiction with stories sometimes drawn from his experiences as a counselor and therapist. With pregnancies and gay kids, his books are challenged often enough that he is in the American Library Association’s Top 10 authors for most-challenged and most-banned.

At Prineville, after each got through expressing shock and outrage, Schulz and Landaker admitted mistakes had been made all around. Schulz said he expected a six-person committee would review Part-Time Indian over the holiday break. And a report is expected for the Jan. 12 board meeting, where the board will consider three options: keep the book, keep it with restrictions, don’t keep it.

Either way, people will be watching.

“If the library invites me, I will give a reading in Prineville tomorrow,” Alexie says. “The amazing thing is these banners never understand they are turning this book into a sacred treasure. We don’t write to try and be banned, but it is widely known in the [young adult] world, we love this shit.”