New Jersey school bans Junot Díaz novel over mental health concerns

Forty-seven students in an Advanced Placement English class at Columbia High School in South Orange, New Jersey signed a petition this month to keep their book. The school had pulled Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao off the AP English syllabus—not because of a parent complaint or a right-wing pressure campaign, but because at least five students in the district had attempted suicide during the school year, and administrators decided a scene depicting a suicide attempt made the novel too risky to teach right now.