How WeirDO: students protest as Anh Do’s book series banned from US schools

The land of the free last year banned 17 books by one of Australia’s happiest refugees. And Anh Do didn’t even know.

Author Anh Do. Picture: ABC

Astonishing news from the US: the land of the free last year banned 17 books by one of Australia’s happiest refugees.

And Anh Do didn’t even know.

Do, 45, who arrived in Australia aged three after surviving a perilous boat journey from Vietnam, is – among many other things – the author of the WeirDO series of children’s books, all of which were banned for use in Pennsylvania public schools in November 2020.

The ban was lifted only in January after a spirited campaign by students, who took to the school grounds with placards demanding their reinstatement and opposing censorship in all its forms.

Do, a four-time finalist in the Archibald Prize, author of The Happiest Refugee and star of Anh’s Brush With Fame on the ABC, was never made aware of the ban.

His agent, Andrew Laing, said: “It’s amazing. Just incredible. Good on those kids who had it overturned.”

His publisher, Scholastic Australia, was likewise in the dark, until contacted by The Australian on Thursday.

Do’s books deal with the immigrant experience – and, like most of the books on the banned list, they are about people of colour. Other titles on the list included books about segregation activist Rosa Parks and murdered civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr. Malala Yousafzai’s autobio­graphy was there, as was an episode of Sesame Street that dealt with racism.

The school board banned Do’s books after concerns were raised by parents about their “divisive” nature. Some teachers wanted to use the material as “anti-racism” tools, others thought they would do more to divide than unite the school community.

While free speech is protected by the US constitution, censorship is gaining momentum in the US.

The ban on Do’s books came to light in July when PEN America, which champions literature and campaigns against censorship, published a public list called School Book Bans, which covers books recently removed from classrooms and libraries.

Seventeen of Do’s book were on it. He was in fine company: the list also included The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood; Night by Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner, Elie Wiesel; To Kill A Mockingbird by Pulitzer Prize winner Harper Lee; I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou; Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner; and John Green’s Looking for Alaska.

“Books in the US are under profound attack. They are disappearing from library shelves, being challenged in droves, being decreed off limits by school boards, legislators and prison authorities,” PEN said, in a statement.

The ban on 17 of Do’s books was specific to the Central York school district in Pennsylvania, which covers about 5000 students. The Australian understands the board met in August 2020, to consider the “diversity” aspect of the local curriculum.

In a statement to parents at the time, the board said it had been concerned about teaching materials that “may lean more towards indoctrination rather than age-­appropriate academic content.” Some parents were concerned about teachers pushing their political beliefs on students. Others were concerned about the introduction of books about gay kids, for example, particularly if they contained explicit material.

The board voted unanimously in November 2020 to ban all books on the classroom resources list, and it seems the WeirDo series was caught in the dragnet.

When students found out, they began protesting outside schools before classes every day. They received support from Bernice King, the daughter of the Martin Luther King Jr. The ban was overturned last January.