Ashley Hope Perez

This is a stunning book. The setting for the book is east Texas, in 1937, and a real life incident where a school exploded, apparently still the worst school disaster in American history. I had never heard of this tragedy before.

Perez weaves a fictional tale set in New London, Texas, where the school was located. It tells the story of siblings whose mother (a Mexican American) had died, and whose father, a white oilfield worker, brings them to live with him several years later. The older show more child, Naomi, had a different father who had died previously, but the two younger twins are the children of the oilman. Naomi, who is obviously Hispanic in appearance (unlike the twins), does not fit in anywhere and faces prejudice. She is attracted to an African American boy, Wash, who is friendly and helpful. Her stepfather is abusive. The story builds to a climax with the school explosion and the resulting fallout.

The ending of the book is all fiction and not something that actually happened in New London, but it pulls in a lot of racism and was similar to incidents that really did take place elsewhere in the south. Something that I was not aware of was that racism against Hispanics in Texas kept them separate, not just from whites, but also from blacks. It seems that Hispanics mixing with blacks was also frowned on.

This was another book that I had trouble putting down. It is a beautifully written, heartbreaking, tragic, and powerful story. The library has it categorized as a YA book, but in my opinion, that is unfortunate. The central characters in the book are high school seniors, and I am sure that high schoolers would have no trouble reading the book and would get a lot out of it, but to me it read as a standard adult book. I'm afraid that a lot of the potential audience for this story will miss it because it is categorized as YA. It's too good to be hidden away like that. show less

This is a beautiful love story set in 1936-37 rural East Texas, at the site of the 1937 New London School explosion. Naomi is an orphaned Mexican-American girl, living with her elderly grandparents in San Antonio, when Henry, her white stepfather, who now works in the oil fields, takes her back to New London along with his children, her younger twin half-siblings.

While married to second husband Henry, Naomi's mother has several miscarriages that threatened her life, and her doctors advise show more her not to have more children. Henry molests Naomi when she is seven, implying that she could "save" her mother that way. Ultimately he impregnates her mother with the twins, whose births lead to her death. He leaves for the oil fields, but comes back for the children about ten years later, after he's "born again" and quits drinking.

In New London, Naomi does all the cooking and cleaning, but does go to the high school for whites (Henry enrolls her under his surname, Smith). Her beauty arouses jealousy from the girls and lust from the boys. She meets Wash, an African-American boy who works around the school grounds, and they fall in love, which they try to keep secret. Naturally they each experience all the racism typical of rural Texas in the 1930s - and today.

Meanwhile, Henry has returned to drinking, and his pastor suggests he marry Naomi to counter his lustful urges (and gossip). The book ends in tragedy, centered around the school explosion (which was caused by natural gas leaks from a tap into a residue line), but much more, and much worse.

Yes, there are descriptions of sexual acts and feelings in the book - little Naomi is abused by her "religious" stepfather, remember? Despite all the complaints by the "Christian" nationalists and other right-wing fundamentalists that this is "pornography," what really triggers them are 1) an interracial love story, 2) the overt racism displayed by nearly every white person in New London (Naomi's friend Muff is a partial exception, as she's not overt), and 3) the villains are Christians - Henry, supposedly "born again," and his overbearing Pastor Tom.

This book was a much-deserving Michael Printz Honor Book in 2016, for excellence in young adult literature. It *IS* appropriate for young adults who can think for themselves and haven't been brainwashed by their parents or churches. I'm sad to say this book was banned from school library shelves in my racist, radical right-wing rural Republican town, for "sexually explicit content." Surprisingly, I was able to check out the book from the young adult shelves at the local county library in March 2022, when the controversy here arose. However, after I returned the book, it was moved to the adult section. show less

Naomi and her two siblings, Beto and Cari, have moved in with their father (her stepfather), Henry, who works in the oil industry in Texas, 1937. Framed by a school explosion that really happened, [Out of Darkness] explores race tensions through the story of Naomi and Wash, a young black man who falls in love with her. But, in a community so divided and a world defined by race, their found family of Black and Mexican American - including the two children who are light-skinned, like their show more white father - is an impossibility.

The book starts with the aftermath of the explosion, and then goes back in time to the previous year, the beginning of the school year. As a result, a sense of dread hangs over the whole thing, waiting for the physical explosion, the social ramifications of interracial friendship and love, and the twisted desire Henry has for Naomi. You know it's not going to end well, and yet the story is compelling, the main characters Naomi, Wash, Beto and Cari, drawn well, and the siblings relationships are really lovely with moments of joy. The narration switches points of view among these four, as well as side characters such as Henry and "the gang," Naomi's schoolmates. show less

Marisa is a Mexican-American high-school senior from a traditional Mexican immigrant family living in Houston. So she's expected to be a self-sacrificing, dutiful daughter who puts everyone else ahead of her. And she actually tries to do this. Her one "flaw" is that she is good at math, and she wants something different: an education, and an engineering career. What I loved about this book was it's authenticity. The author knows her characters, their lives and struggles: the angry, show more closed-off traditional father, the loyal, beaten-down mother, the brother who gets to take care of himself first, the sister who gets pregnant and marries the good-for-nothing who goes and gets himself disabled in a work accident. I so much want to share this book with a high school senior whose immigrant parents don't seem to care that their daughter might get a high school degree and go on to college--but I think she's too busy to read it. show less