Parent Wants WritersCorps Book Banned

The 2003 WritersCorps anthology “Paint Me Like I Am” is in the news again. This time, a parent in North Fond du Lac, Wisconsin does not want his daughter to read the book and is asking for it to be removed from the school library: “Parent wants book removed from NFdL school library.”

A committee made up of school administrators, parents and students will meet tomorrow to consider the parent’s request. We hope that they will decide to keep the book accessible. One parent’s disapproval of a book should not keep others from having access to it.

The parent is concerned about the language in the poem “Diary of an Abusive Stepfather,” the subject of another controversy in May 2009 when a principal in New Jersey cut the poem out of the book. The book was later replaced by order of the school board.

News coverage of both incidents do not mention that the poem is paired with a second one written by the same student, Jayson Tirado, entitled “Diary of an Abused Son.” Together the poems tell a story of a child who suffers as a result of his father’s substance abuse problems.

By the way, we have one correction to the article, which states that WritersCorps is a national nonprofit. This is not correct. WritersCorps is in fact a national alliance of three separate organizations, each with its own structure but a shared mission to enrich young people’s lives through writing. The WritersCorps in DC is a nonprofit, the one in the Bronx is part of the Bronx Council on the Arts (a nonprofit), and the one here in San Francisco is a project of the San Francisco Arts Commission and the San Francisco Public Library, making it a government program.