All Things Considered’s Tom Crann interviews Minneapolis activist and writer Junauda Petrus about her book “The Stars and the Blackness Between Them” being placed on a potenial banned books list in Texas. The book is the story of two black girls from very different backgrounds finding love and happiness in a world that seems determined to deny them both.
Petrus is an American author, filmmaker, and performance artist. Her book “The Stars and the Blackness Between Them” was winner of a Coretta Scott King Honor Award.
Transcripts
text | pdf |
SPEAKER: In Texas, school districts face a Friday deadline to report to the state's legislature on whether they use hundreds of books that one lawmaker there has deemed problematic. Four of them were written by Macalester College Professor Duchess Harris. One includes writing by Senator Amy Klobuchar and another is by Minneapolis author and poet Junauda Petrus.
Republican lawmaker Matt Krause in Texas requested the accounting of books that, quote, "might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress," end quote. He's running for attorney general in an election that follows successful Republican campaigns in New Jersey and Virginia that focused on the way race is taught in schools.
Junauda Petrus is author of The Stars and the Blackness Between Them, and she joins us now. Thanks for taking the time to speak with us.
JUNAUDA PETRUS: Oh, my gosh, thank you so much for having me on your show.
SPEAKER: Well, a lot of people might brush this off. And some of the authors on this list have done just that as a political stunt. And I'm wondering, what's your reaction, and how are you reacting to this?
JUNAUDA PETRUS: While I do feel that it clearly is some kind of political stunt, I don't underestimate the impact it can have as far as who gets access to reading things. Like, I think sometimes we don't realize that the line between limitless possibility and freedom and draconian existence is a very thin line. So there's a part that gives me a sense of sobriety, even though I think it's totally silly in other ways, too.
SPEAKER: So how do you describe your novel, The Stars and the Blackness Between Them? It's targeted at what they call YA or Young Audiences. And it is a love story between two teenage girls, right?
JUNAUDA PETRUS: Yes, so my book is about two Black girls, one from Minneapolis and one from Trinidad and the Caribbean. And the girl from Trinidad has a really sweet and mystical relationship with her grandmother and a complicated, tense relationship with her mother. And her mother sends her to live with her Black American father after she's discovered making out with a girl from church.
And when she comes up to Minneapolis, she befriends and starts to have feelings for another young woman who's going through a serious illness that's really making her live in a existential space.
SPEAKER: I want to read a review from Kirkus, which reviews books and is highly regarded in the publishing industry. And it says, "Readers seeking a deep, uplifting love story will not be disappointed as the novel covers both flourishing feelings and bigger questions around belief and what happens when we face our own mortality. A cosmically compelling read."
So after reaction like that, I'm wondering, do you have any idea-- has anyone told you why your book would have shown up on this Texas book list?
JUNAUDA PETRUS: To me, it just feels like this very ambiguous and nebulous way to be anti-Black, anti-LGBTQ. Because there's nothing about my book that is anything but love. To me, books are where I went to feel safe. It's where as a low-income Black girl, I got to get therapy was through books.
SPEAKER: Let me just put an argument to you that I'm sure you've heard and thought of before, and some people might be thinking. Great, buy the books on your own. Kids can read what they want, but schools shouldn't necessarily be providing them or promoting them. And what do you say to that argument?
JUNAUDA PETRUS: I mean, schools promote white supremacists and call them our forefathers. And I mean, what's interesting right now is that there's a case in Prior Lake, which is in Minnesota, of a young white woman going on one of these social media platforms, calling a classmate of hers the n-word and telling her she's ugly and that she should kill herself.
What ways could a book have interrupted that confusion on the part of that young white woman? What ways could she have understood that, I, as a white girl, could do so much to end this hatred and violence? But instead, she's getting access to things that further deepen her hate. It's like, how can we advocate for young people to be on some new visions than what we've all had to absorb and consume and digest and now we're trying to detox and heal ourselves from?
SPEAKER: Junauda Petrus is the author of The Stars and the Blackness Between Them. Thanks so much for your perspective on this. It was good talking with you.
JUNAUDA PETRUS: Oh, my gosh, thank you for inviting me.