CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Catawba County Board of Education Monday held a hearing discussing two potential book bans. The books are "Beyond Magenta" by Susan Kuklin and "Out of Darkness" by Ashley Hope Perez.
After nearly five hours, the board voted to remove "Out of Darkness" by Ashley Hope Perez and keep "Beyond Magenta" by Susan Kuklin.
The books were being challenged by board member Michelle Teague, who campaigned last year on challenging 24 books in the school library.
Kuklin's book details the stories of six transgender and nonbinary teenagers.
"Each honest discussion and disclosure, whether joyful or heartbreaking, is completely different from the other because of family dynamics, living situations, gender, and the transition these teens make in recognition of their true selves," according to a description of the book from the author's website.
"All six participants in Beyond Magenta chose to speak to me for three primary reasons: They wanted to define themselves publicly in their own terms; they wanted to educate others; and they wanted to let other young people in similar situations know that they are not alone," Kuklin wrote in an opinion piece for NPR in 2022.
Perez's book is a fictional love story between a Mexican-American girl and an African American boy set in 1937's Texas.
"Sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive," the book's description details.
"Challenges to my book and others have ignored the intentions of each book as a whole, and the messages of hope, moral courage, repair, and connection that accompany the hard realities we examine," Perez wrote in a column published by the Hickory Daily Record.
Perez says her book was first challenged in 2021 when it "became a target for politically motivated book bans across the country," Perez wrote for NPR last year.
Public comments were allowed at Monday's meeting, which started at 6 p.m. inside the boardroom at the Catawba County School Administration Building, located at 2285 North Anderson Avenue in Newton. Doors opened at 5:30 p.m.
Ahead of the meeting, school district officials stressed the boardroom has a capacity limit of 60 public seats. To accommodate potential crowds, officials asked attendees to form a line at the designated door area and down the adjacent ramp. The public was welcome to begin lining up after 5 p.m., a notice from the district explained.
Contact Tradesha Woodard at twoodard1@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.