Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass
Artist: Meg Medina
Year: 2013
Date of Action: September 2013
Region: North America
Location: Cumberland Middle School
Subject: Political/Economic/Social Opinion, Violence, Youth
Medium: Literature
Confronting Bodies: Cumberland County (VA)
Description of Artwork: Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina is a novel about a girl's experience at a new high school as she is targeted by a bully.
The Incident: YA author Meg Medina was scheduled to speak at an anti-bully event at Cumberland Middle School in Virginia. However, the school's board of education deemed the front cover, the title, and the language in the novel to be too inappropriate for the students.
Results of Incident: Medina had highly anticipated speaking about her book, and she defended that the presentation was not going to focus at all on the language used in the novel but the message to stop bullying. However, the school decided that it could teach bully prevention without the "unacceptable language" used by the characters in the novel.
Source:
• http://www.wric.com/story/23393043/author-appearance-canceled-over
