This Book Won't Burn: Chapters 43-Epilogue

I’ve gone through all the bullet points on my phone and, fueled by this buoyant feeling inside of me, ad-libbed a whole lot.

Anyway, you are not the person who threw an incendiary device into the meeting.

There’s a tentative knock on my bedroom door.

She plops down on the bed, eyeing the detritus of my café run.

They’re interviewing a bunch of people at the gazebo in the town square, apparently, and they wanted to get my perspective.

“Never underestimate an angry desi mom’s ability to vanquish you, then raise you from the dead only to kill you again because once wasn’t enough.”

I’m joined by Steve Hawley, school board president, who is also running unopposed in the special election to replace Republican state representative Joe Meese, who resigned under a cloud of multiple malfeasance accusations.

Hawley: Those books are merely under review for pedagogical value and to ensure the texts are free from pornography or obscenity.

Final decisions will be based on rigorous criteria.

Silence is complicity. So that’s why my friends and I decided to do something about it.

“Speaking on behalf of Tom and Kristy, we felt compelled to call this emergency meeting of the board in light of the deeply disturbing acts of bigotry and violence we’ve seen in our town these last weeks, including throwing an incendiary device into a book club meeting that injured high school students, and culminating in the burning of books by other high school students,” she says, a rumble of anger in her voice.

This is antithetical to the mission of a school district, which is to educate our children, not create breeding grounds of ignorance!

Looking around as the group of Liberty Moms and Dads stand up and walk out en masse, hearing the gavel banging behind me, hearing so many students and adults cheer, there’s a kind of lightness that spreads through my body, something in the core of my being that feels unleashed.

“Is that a phoenix?” I point to a small bird painted on the back, rising from red-orange flames.

At first I resisted wearing it because I didn’t want to dredge up the past, but my mom was adamant that it was okay.