Alaska School District Votes Out ‘Catch-22,’ ‘Gatsby’ and Other Classics

School board members in Palmer, Alaska, raised concerns about language and sexual references in five books deemed too controversial.

By Derrick Bryson Taylor
April 29, 2020

An Alaska school board voted last week to remove five books, including classic American works like “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” and “The Great Gatsby,” from its curriculum for high school English electives because of sexual references, graphic language and other concerns.

A list of books deemed too controversial to be taught in electives including poetry, journalism, creative writing and American literature was presented at a Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District board meeting on April 22. The list cited “sexually explicit material” and “‘anti-white’ messaging” in “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Maya Angelou’s seminal memoir, and raised concerns about language and sexual references in “The Great Gatsby,” the landmark 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The other books on the list — “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller and “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien — were judged to be inappropriate because they contained mentions of rape, incest, racial slurs, profanity and misogyny.

The district, which is based in Palmer, about 40 miles northeast of Anchorage, has an enrollment of more than 19,000 students from kindergarten through 12th grade and is the second-largest school district in Alaska.

Before the board members voted, 5 to 2, in favor of removing the books, Sarah Welton, the board’s clerk, said at the meeting that she noticed a lot of her students lacked critical thinking skills and that removing the books could be a “disservice” to them.

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