Vision Quest (book)
Date: 1993
Region: North America
Subject: Sexual/Gender Orientation , Explicit Sexuality Nudity
Medium: Literature
Artist: Terry Davies
Confronting Bodies: Parent Cindy Hochstetler and Bismarck School Board
Dates of Action: 1993
Location: Bismarck, North Dakota
Description of Artwork: An intensely serious high-school wrestler prepares for an important match while waging mental battles on other fronts: his love affair, his constant dieting, his relationship with his parents, and his inveterate novel-reading.
The Incident: Cindy Hochstetler worked to get Vision Quest along with several other "shocking and pornographic" books out of Hughes Junior High School (ND) classrooms and libraries. In April, Hochstetler filed complaints against Vision as well as Deliverance (book) and Sex Education. She also lodged protests against seventh-grade classrooms use of Dead Birds Singing, by Marc Talbert, and Jason and Marceline, by Jerry Spinelle.
Results of Incident: In late July librarians agreed to move Vision Quest along with Deliverance (book) to high school libraries.On August 2, a review committee voted unanimously to keep Sex Education in the library and 8-1 to keep the Talbert and Spinelle books on the seventh grade reading list. "I'll let the Sex Education book go, " Hochstetler said after the meeting. "I just wanted a group of nine people to review it." but she appealed the other two books. On August 24, however, Superintendent Lowell Jensen ruled in favor of keeping the books. Hochstetler said she would appeal that decision to the Bismarck School Board.
Source: Office for Intellectual Freedom, American Library Association
