Snow Falling on Cedars Swept off Shelves
of Texas High School
Deeming passages of Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson “highly offensive,” Boerne (Tex.) Independent School District Superintendent John Kelly has ordered the novel pulled from the shelves of Boerne High School library and barred from the curriculum. After English teacher Frances Riley assigned the book, several parents and students complained about its racial epithets and sexually graphic passages. However, according to the September 11 Spokane (Wash.) Spokesman-Review, 17-year-old Jerald Meadows said that students daunted by the book’s 460-page length “complained to their parents about it just to get out of reading it.”
The PEN/Faulkner Award winner for 1995, the novel (which is set in the years surrounding World War II) examines mid-20th-century race relations by recounting how a Japanese-American living on Puget Sound is charged with murdering a fellow fisherman who is Caucasian. Riley, who volunteered September 10 to stop teaching the book, said she’ll consult the American Federation of Teachers about a reprimand she received for using the material with her classes.
Posted September 20, 1999.
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