BOOK TITLES NOT ACCESSIBLE FOR CLASSROOM USE

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman, I.W.B.S.

“School librarians are professionals dedicated to the education and protection of children while cultivating a thirst for knowledge. We should trust them to do their jobs – while holding them accountable – not subvert their expertise by searching for a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. There are already processes in place if a parent wants to challenge a book that they find inappropriate or have concerns about. These processes are designed at the local level to adjudicate the challenges because one size does not fit all when it comes to education. The state should respect the local processes in place in Texas.” —Texas Library Association, January 20, 2022. Photo by Getty; Adam Maida at "This Is a Shakedown: Texas has a book-banning problem" by Emma Sarappo at The Atlantic, December 9, 2021

                                     

deep in the heart of texas 

there is a bonfire of books 

burning words  

like witches 

there is no white heat   

no smoke 

but still they burn 

in their sealed boxes 

by those who would coffin thought 

beware 

those who would scatter the ashes 

what is written on paper 

is also written in stone 

Sister Lou Ella has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer.  Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and The New Verse News as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo.  She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and in 2020. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015 (Press 53.) On May 11, 2021, five poems from her book which had been set to music by James Lee III were performed by the opera star Susanna Phillips, star clarinetist Anthony McGill, pianist Mayra Huang at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The group of songs is entitled “Chavah’s Daughters Speak.”

OUT OF THE RACE

by David L Williams

Cartoon by Nick Anderson at The Week

A Republican state lawmaker has launched an investigation into Texas school districts over the type of books they have, particularly if they pertain to race or sexuality or "make students feel discomfort." State Rep. Matt Krause, in his role as chair of the House Committee on General Investigating, notified the Texas Education Agency that he is "initiating an inquiry into Texas school district content," according to an Oct. 25 letter obtained by The Texas Tribune… His list of titles includes bestsellers and award winners alike, from the 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates to last year's book club favorites: “Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot” by Mikki Kendall and Isabel Wilkerson's Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. —The Texas Tribune, October 26, 2021

The Brahmin cried, ‘I found a corpse inside

My mind, and gave it decent burial

To finally start the journey of my life

That had to wait until I became equal.’

I learned of this while reading a great book

I’d heard so much about, and now at last

Am disappointed at how long it took

To broach deep inequalities from Caste.

I doubt the author will raise much complaint

My paraphrasing that self-reformed Brahmin

Who boldly cast away the lifelong taint

He felt from having had to wear an emblem

Of how this hierarchy in history

Inflicted untold horrors and misery

Which still continue to the present day

Enslaved as mudsills in the USA.

Editor's Note: In quotation marks in stanza one is a paraphrase adapted from the words of a Brahmin quoted by Isabel Wilkerson on page 364 of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Minor adaptations by the poet create here a sort of “found poetic stanza.” For more on Wilkerson's book, see her NYT Magazine piece "America’s Enduring Caste System" and Sunil Khilnani’s New Yorker review, “Isabel Wilkerson’s World-Historical Theory of Race and Caste.”

David L Williams is recently retired from 34 years teaching high school English in Lincoln, Nebraska, his primary residence since he went to college there in the 80s. His poetry has mostly been written since May of 2021, and he has only recently started trying to publish, with success already in several journals.

WHITEWASH

by Eileen Ivey Sirota

About 100 people, many of them Native Americans, held a protest in Pierre in September to push for improved teaching of Native American history and culture in South Dakota schools and to decry removal of Native references from proposed social studies standards. Photo: Courtesy DRG Media Group via Kelo, November 14, 2021.

All the white pages lovely, unspoiled

by time, untouched by torment.

All aboard. 

 

An uninterrupted arc of progress. 

Heroes on horseback.  See Dick and Jane

in their triumphant ignorance. 

 

We have torn you

from our history books, those fairy tales

for innocents and children.

 

Unseen and unheard are the children we ripped

from their mothers, sent away

to boarding schools to be laundered

and whitened, their mother tongue ripped out.

 

“Kill the Indian and save the man,” proclaimed Richard Pratt. 

At the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania,

one hundred eighty-six graves

cradle their small bones.

 

From your mouths we tore         

the sacred place names and stamped them

on our suburban street signs.                                                 

 

So many ways of killing—the bullet, the blanket,

the exile, the pretending, the silence.                                   

The silence.

 

 

Eileen Ivey Sirota is a poet and psychotherapist, the author of a chapbook, Out of Order, published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.  Her poems also have appeared in Calyx, Ekphrastic Review, District Lines, The New Verse News, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly.