In a way I’m grateful that the Elizabeth School District, by pulling Khaled Hosseini’s outstanding novel “The Kite Runner” from its high school library shelves, unintentionally prompted me to read it. It’s one of the most powerful novels on redemption I’ve ever read.

But the more I learned about the ‘reasons’ for the book’s suppression, the angrier I became. Some complaints about the book were fabrications, and the district used double standards to suppress the book.

I am reading all twenty books embroiled in the Elizabeth controversy, including the eighteen pulled from school library shelves. In my previous column on the topic, I discussed two wonderful books, “You Should See Me in a Crown” and “Redwood and Ponytail,” challenged because they feature gay characters, and another book, “Speak,” challenged despite its high literary value and strong anti-rape message.

True, “The Kite Runner” includes some disturbing scenes of rape, violence, and attempted suicide and is not appropriate for young children. Even some older teens and adults may wish to avoid the book, especially if they have suffered trauma of which the book may remind them. The novel depicts horrible acts in order to condemn such acts, on the implicit premise that we cannot make the world a better place by ignoring its problems.

In the first pages of the novel, we find an American immigrant remembering his past in Afghanistan, reflecting on his “unatoned sins,” and wondering “if there is a way to be good again.” What follows is a story of a child coming of age, a country falling apart, and a man returning to his childhood home on a desperate mission to make right what had gone so wrong.

There is a reason why the book has sold more than 12 million copies in over 40 languages. Despite its specific setting, it speaks to universal human concerns of friendship, betrayal, social collapse, moral growth, and redemption.

Why, then, did the Elizabeth School District pull it from shelves?

The Nonsense Basis of the Book’s Suppression

The ACLU, which is suing the district over its suppression of books, includes among its memos Document 9-13, of which page 14 contains the only listed complaint of “The Kite Runner.” Following is the entire complaint from “Laura,” who recommended that the book be “removed from the library collection” rather than “listed on the sensitive topic list:”

Very adult sexual content, not appropriate for teens. Very racially divisive, again not appropriate for teens. LGBTQ themes that do not belong in school. The references to abortion again are not appropriate for teens. Additionally, I do not want my teen reading a book that criticizes Christianity. This book is for adults, not teens and should not be available in a school library.

The complaint is ridiculous. I read the book cover-to-cover. There is no reference to abortion. There is no criticism of Christianity. Those are just outright fabrications.

Let us pause, before returning to other allegations, to explore the origins of these claims. How did a Colorado parent get the idea that “The Kite Runner” talks about abortion and disparages Christians, among other alleged offenses? The most likely theory is that Laura misinterpreted an ambiguous news story from 2022 or a derivative text.

Here’s what Florida’s News6 reported on May 11, 2022:

The Brevard chapter of Moms for Liberty has submitted a fourth list of library books deemed inappropriate for minors, this time calling out instances of “racially divisive” rhetoric, LGBTQ themes, references to abortion and criticism of Christianity in addition to the explicit sex scenes that dominated the first lists.

Sound familiar? The language from this ambiguous report fed into subsequent reports. Notice that the report lists “The Kite Runner” as a contested book but does not actually say that all of the specific complaints apply to that book. Apparently Laura did not pick up on that nuance.

The alleged problems listed in the ambiguous 2022 report also were repeated elsewhere. For example, on January 26, 2024, Pen America reported:

Roughly 40 books are still awaiting formal review in the district [Brevard County], including Bible Stories for Little Angels. The Brevard chapter of Moms for Liberty submitted an objection to The Kite Runner and other books in 2022, saying the books included sexual content, “racially divisive” rhetoric, LGBTQ themes, references to abortion, and criticism of Christianity.

Apparently Laura, who obviously never had read the book herself, was in effect playing a game of telephone, leading to her gross distortions of the novel’s contents.

Returning to the complaints: The book does discuss Islam, and the main character ends up being a devout Muslim, while the Taliban are portrayed as betraying their religion.

There are no “LGBTQ themes” in the book. There is mature sexual content, and this involves male-on-male rape, but the implication that male-on-male rape, a vicious crime committed to display dominance and act out hatred, somehow is an “LGBTQ theme,” is just ludicrous. Are prisons also “LGBTQ themed” due to the prevalence of prison rape? The complaint, if even seriously intended, stems from a stupid category error.

(Note: Some spoilers follow and are unavoidable here to fully explain the novel in light of the criticisms of it.)

Hosseini includes acts of male-on-male rape to illustrate how horrible they are, to illustrate how ethnic hatreds can spill over into violence, and to advance the story toward the eventual confrontation of the protagonist and the primary villain, a rapist and mass-murderer.

Yes, this is rough stuff. It is also the sort of thing that often happens in the real world especially in times of war and turmoil (as in Sudan). We do not help our children prepare for the real world by keeping them ignorant of its problems.

Regarding the phrase “not appropriate for teens,” is it not obvious that an 18 or 19-year-old likely will be more mature than a 13-year-old? Legally, an 18-year-old is an adult, and a substantial number of high school students are over 18. I do think that even some younger teens are mature enough to read the novel, though.

So the question, then, is whether mature teens should read books such as “The Kite Runner.” The answer, with few exceptions, if we actually want our children to grow into capable and thoughtful adults, is, absolutely.

Notably, documents published by the ACLU (Exhibit 18) indicate that board members suppressed the book based only on its sexual content.

The claim that the novel is “very racially divisive” also is ludicrous. The novel describes ethnic tensions and ethnic violence in order to criticize ethnic hierarchies and condemn ethnic violence. Compare: Is any mention of slavery in the U.S. also “racially divisive?” The novel thus seeks to heal ethnic divisions, not further divide people.

Specifically, the novel deals with the way that Hazaras often faced discrimination and even violence in Afghanistan. The protagonist, Amir, sometimes treats his friend, Hassan, as an inferior and only a servant. Beautifully, the novel reveals that Amir and Hassan actually are half-brothers.

True, some Afghans criticized the novel for its portrayal of ethnic conflict. But, as Hosseini replied, the complaints seemed to stem from not wanting to say embarrassing yet true things about Afghanistan. That said, it would be a mistake to describe the Pashtuns only as oppressors and Hazaras only as oppressed; different groups committed atrocities when they had the power to do so. As “The Kite Runner” illustrates, different people in Afghanistan either overcame or else nursed ethnic bigotries to varying degrees. The novel very clearly endorses the healing of divisions.

I strongly suspect that, had the protagonist of the novel been Christian rather than Muslim, the book never would have been challenged. This is especially so given that the main character heroically rescues a child from sexual slavery, the sort of story that in other contexts Christian activists celebrate — see, as examples, the political campaign of Republican Victor Marx and the 2023 film by the faith-based Angel Studios, “Sound of Freedom.”

Elizabeth’s Absurd Double-Standards

Bearing in mind that the Elizabeth School District pulled “The Kite Runner” because of its violent sexual content, let’s see what the district actually has students read.

As of September 8, Elizabeth High School listed the following books as included in its high school curriculum. Note that I’m not listing all the books, just ones with substantial violence. Certainly I am not saying these books should be removed or not be taught or anything like that; my aim here is just to compare violent content.

9th Grade: The “Odyssey.” This work contains extraordinary amounts of violence, including the sacking of cities, the taking of women as sexual conquests, assassinations, matricide, suicide, dismemberment, smashed skulls, cannibalism, and people carried away for food. After the cyclops dashes men against the floor, “the wet ground steamed with blood and brain.” The high school links to an older version of the epic translated by Philip Stanhope Worsley, and the volume ends with Book XII. At the end of the full epic, in which some of the suitors raped some of the maids, Odysseus slaughters all of the suitors, hangs the offending maids, and dismembers Melanthius before feeding him to the dogs.

9th Grade: “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.” This work also describes extreme violence, including the whipping of a slave “till she was literally covered with blood” and the murder of a slave girl by a woman who “seized an oak stick of wood by the fireplace, and with it broke the girl’s nose and breastbone.”

9th Grade: “The Outsiders,” by S. E. Hinton. This book about gang violence includes a murder by stabbing and a suicide-by-cop.

9th Grade, “Of Mice and Men,” by John Steinbeck. Lennie accidentally kills a puppy, then accidentally breaks a woman’s neck, then George kills Lennie to prevent a lynch mob from killing him. (Side note: I too read this book in school and absolutely loathed it.)

10th Grade: “Lord of the Flies.” In this work, a group of boys beat another boy to death.

10th Grade: “Oedipus Rex,” by Sophocles. In this play, Oedipus kills his own father (without knowing his identity) and marries his own mother, who kills herself, after which Oedipus gouges out his eyes.

10th Grade: “Fahrenheit 451.” This dystopia depicts suicide by burning, a man being burned alive by a flamethrower, and the annihilation of an entire city (although there are some survivors). Apparently the district did not consider the irony of suppressing books while at the same time assigning “Fahrenheit 451.”

10th Grade, “Julius Caesar.” This depicts a bloody assassination, other murders, and suicides.

11th Grade, “1984.” Ironically, Elizabeth placed this book on its list of sensitive books due to its “graphic violence.”

12th Grade, “Brave New World.” This is another book the district marked at “sensitive,” this time for “sexual content.” The novel depicts self-flagellation, an orgy, and a suicide.

12th Grade, “The Jungle.” This work depicts coercive rape, violence, and death due to brutal conditions.

12th Grade, “We,” by Yevgeny Zamyatin. This dark dystopia ends with forced surgery, torture, and murder.

12th Grade, “The Crucible.” This is about the murder of “witches.”

12th Grade, “Hamlet.” This play depicts murder by poison, murder by stabbing, murder by arranged executions, and a possible suicide.

12th Grade, “The Road.” This dystopia depicts cannibalism, including a newborn infant roasting on a spit, and extreme violence.

We also can turn to the list of books that the district marked “sensitive” but did not pull from shelves. Notably, this includes “A Clockwork Orange,” which coins the term “ultraviolence” and depicts violence in gruesome detail.

Also included on this list are “Ender’s Game,” in which a young boy nearly destroys an entire species; “The Hunger Games,” in which children murder each other to entertain the governing elite; and the Bible, which, as I’ve mentioned, graphically depicts prostitution, rape, dismemberment, and mass-murder.

Obviously, the Elizabeth School District did not suppress “The Kite Runner” because some people within the district read it and found it especially offensive. Rather, someone who did not read it misinterpreted reporting about it, and the district imposed completely arbitrary standards, suppressing some books and allowing others for no good reason. That the protagonist is Muslim probably didn’t help.

Hosseini Explains the Value of Reading Books

On January 23, 2023, Hosseini wrote an open letter to the Brevard County School Board concerning efforts to suppress his book there. Following is part of what he wrote:

Inside a drawer in my office desk sits a stash of manilla envelopes. Inside each are some of the writings I have collected. . . . They have come to me from high school students from all across the U.S. In these writings, the students share with me often quite poignantly what impact reading The Kite Runner has had on their lives. For some, the book is a clarion call to stand up to bullies, to defy intolerance. … Yet others — perhaps inspired by the book’s de facto tagline, there is a way to be good again — speak of the desire to volunteer, learn more, be more tolerant of others, mend broken ties, muster the courage to do the right and just thing, no matter how difficult.

For many students, both those who write me and the many I have met at high schools across the country, The Kite Runner is their first window into Afghan culture. …

I am a parent myself. I understand the parental impulse to safeguard our children from harm. But banning books like The Kite Runner doesn’t “protect” students at all. It betrays them. It robs them of the chance that we as parents and instructors owe them, the chance to broaden their human community, to let them walk the world in another’s shoes for a while, to foster empathy for others, to be challenged by the experience and perhaps take a small step toward becoming fuller, richer versions of themselves.

Hopefully the efforts of the Elizabeth School District to suppress “The Kite Runner” will have a silver lining of encouraging more people to read the novel. The novel changed the way I see Afghanistan, gave me plenty to think about in terms of atonement for past misdeeds, and forever planted with me the image of Hassan as a young boy, smiling and pure of heart, when I see children flying kites.

This is Part Three of a multi-part series on the books suppressed by Elizabeth School District. Read Part One here. Read Part Two here.

Header image by Christin Hume on Unsplash.