The book I picked is The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. The story starting in the 1970s, right before the fall of Afghanistan’s monarchy. The story follows a boy named Amir, who lived in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Amir is friends with Hassan, a servant boy in Amir’s house. A lot of the conflict in the first part of the book stems from the fact that Hassan is of the ethnic minority Hazara. Later the book has Amir and his father flee to the United States only for Amir to return as an adult with the intent to help Hassan.

The reason this book is challenged lies in the language and violence in the book. The book is an account of the dangers in Afghanistan during this time period. There are two characters that I remember who attempt suicide (one suicides), but this isn’t the main thing that is contested about this book. Pretty early in the book, Hassan gets raped by another boy his age. Most complaints about the text revolve around the fact that it was a homosexual rape, not that there was the rape of a child. One challenge presented to the book was that a school informed the parents of the rape but not the homosexual nature of it.