“It was uncontroversial for six years,” said Perez, a 37-year-old mother of two and assistant professor in the department of comparative studies at Ohio State University. “In 2015, the Black Lives Matter movement had just taken off and people were ready to grapple with these issues. Instead, though, the book quickly garnered success, winning a number of national awards and receiving favorable reviews. Maybe “Out of Darkness” would face a bit of backlash in the beginning, the North Side resident recalled thinking. It does, after all, focus on non-white characters and themes of racism and segregation while depicting the tragic 1937 school gas explosion in New London, Texas, that killed roughly 300 students and teachers. When Ashley Perez published her third young adult novel in 2015, she never imagined it would be very controversial.
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