The Stars and the Blackness Between Them
By Junauda Petrus
"Port of Spain, Trinidad. Sixteen-year-old Audre is heartbroken, having just found out she's going to live in America with her father because her mother caught her with her secret girlfriend, the pastor's granddaughter. Audre's grandmother (a dancer who drives a white convertible Mercedes and has a few secrets of her own) reassures Audre that she won't lose her roots, not even in some place called Minneapolis. "America have dey spirits too, believe me," she tells Audre. Minneapolis, USA. Sixteen-year-old Mabel is staring at a picture of Whitney Houston, trying figure out why she feels the way she feels - about her ex, Terrell, about her girl Jada and that moment they had in the woods, and about the vague feeling of illness that's plagued her all summer. Mabel's reverie is cut short when her dad announces that a friend and his just-arrived-from-Trinidad daughter are coming for dinner..." - Provided by publisher
Why was this book challenged?
Banned book element tile
Reasons: Sexual Content, Racial Content, LGBTQIA+
The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus showed up on The Krause List, which is a compilation of around 850 books targeted for censorship by Republican State Rep. Matt Krause, of Fort Worth.
In an interview with MPR news, Petrus had this to say about her book showing up on Krause's list: "It just feels like this very ambiguous and nebulous way to be anti-Black, anti-LGBTQ, because there's nothing about my book that is anything but love. There was just so much love that I put into it, because I was a kid who loved to read. To me books are where I went to feel safe. It's where, as a low-income Black girl, I got therapy through books. "
Ways to read this book at STCC!
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Additional Resources and Accessibility
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