David Vitale, President of the Chicago Board of Education
Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of Chicago
March 15, 2013
Dear Ms. Byrd-Bennett, Mr. Vitale, and Mayor Emanuel:
On behalf of both the American Library Association (ALA) and its First Amendment legal arm, the Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF), I am writing to express our organizations’ deep concern regarding the “recall” of the bookPersepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi from multiple Chicago Public Schools (CPS) high schools. Persepolis is an award-winning work that is well reviewed and widely praised for its sensitive and remarkable depiction of a young woman’s coming of age during the Iranian Revolution.
Earlier this week, a directive was issued by administrators at the Fullerton network and Lane Tech High Schools for this book to be removed from school libraries and classrooms. Emails from Aisha Strong of Fullerton and Christopher Dignam of Lane Tech explicitly direct CPS staff to physically remove Persepolisfrom classrooms and libraries. A subsequent email from Jeremy Dunn provides “clarification from the Chief Education Office that the directive to removePersepolis from schools does not apply to school libraries, and that any further challenge or attempt to remove this or any other book from a school library must be guided by the Collection Development policy which outlines the review procedure.”
While we applaud the CPS Department of Libraries for adhering to its own very well-crafted policies on school library collection development, particularly Policy 604.7, we remain exceedingly troubled by the standing directive to remove the book from classrooms.
We understand that concerns about the content of Persepolis – particularly regarding specific passages, language, and images deemed graphic or otherwise objectionable – were brought forward by a CPS principal, sparking the current removal and review of this book as teaching material. In addition, we understand that the driving concern behind this “recall” is access to Persepolis by CPS seventh graders, yet the book is identified as an instructional text in the CPS Literacy Content Framework (Common Core) Seventh Grade Toolset – a curriculum guide provided to teachers for the
