Hey, everyone. In this week before Labor Day, we are revisiting some of our favorite conversations

from the past year or so. Today, I'm going to share an episode we aired back in December. It was

all about book banning. I'd wondered what happens when it's your book that's being banned.

And that's how I ended up talking with young adult author Ashley Hope Perez. All right, here's the show.

Head up, everyone. We're going to be talking about banned books in this episode. And the reasons

those books got banned in the first place a lot of times that includes some Frank talk about sex.

So you've been warned. When I was in high school, there was that one English teacher, everyone

adored, the one who sponsored the literary magazine, the one who encouraged students to keep journals

and read poetry out loud. I thought of that teacher when I got Ashley Perez on the line.

She used to teach English down in Texas. I taught on the southeast side of Houston at Chavez,

since I've each of his high school back in the early 2000s. That meant assigning the so-called

classics. Well, I was teaching back in the days of Tequila, Markingbird, of Mison Men.

I saw some shakes here. So I taught Julius Caesar McBath.

Yeah, was there ever a book you wouldn't teach? Well, I didn't teach for my my district literature

textbook at all. They just state, actually, we use them as door stops. We would just

have to think to hold the door open. I think that when literature is put in a textbook, it stops

seeming alive. Ashley writes young adult books now. But the way she said that last bit, the way she

talks about literature being alive, I felt like I was back in the classroom with her, feeling the

muted thrill of AP English. Because Ashley taught mostly black and Latino kids, she thinks a lot about

how to make books like hers welcoming for all kinds of readers. That means thinking about the hidden

messages her stories can send. I have a really big issue with glossaries, for example. There was a

period of time that books like mine that incorporated Spanish would have a glossary in the back,

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