School district bans Common Core-approved novel for sexually explicit material:

School district bans Common Core-approved novel for sexually explicit material

By Valerie Strauss, Published: September 19 at 8:00 amE-mail the writer

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A book hailed by critics and listed in the Common Core State Standards as a reading exemplar for 11th-graders was banned by an Arizona school district because of sexually explicit passages.

The book, “Dreaming in Cuban,” written by Cuban-American author Cristina García and named a finalist for the National Book Award when it was published in 1992, was banned in the Sierra Vista Unified School District after a parent complained that her 10th-grade son was asked to read explicit passages aloud, according to the Associated Press. It wasn’t clear why a 10th-grade class was reading a book suggested for 11th-graders.

The superintendent of the school district, Kriss Hagerl, was quoted as saying that she doesn’t like banning books but probably would have given teachers a different book to use in class if officials had been aware of the contents of the book.

The AP quoted the author, Garcia, that the book, which is about three generations of women in Cuba, has never run into this kind of opposition before and that she thought that it should be part of a student’s cultural education. She said:

Many works, not just mine, are misinterpreted or misguidedly banned because of the 

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