After outcry, Texas county reverses its classification of an Indigenous history book as fiction

A Texas county on Tuesday reversed a decision to reclassify a children’s book on Native American history as fiction after the move drew anger from authors, advocates and one of the world’s largest publishing companies.

A citizen committee in Montgomery County, just north of Houston, moved the nonfiction book “Colonization and the Wampanoag Story” from the county library system’s juvenile nonfiction collection to its fiction collection last week, according to an email from a librarian shared with The Washington Post. The book details encounters between the Wampanoag tribe and the Pilgrims, as well as encounters between Christopher Columbus and other Indigenous tribes.

Advocates and nonprofits, including the Texas Freedom to Read Project, Authors Against Book Bans and the American Indian Library Association, blasted the move in an open letter Wednesday asking the county to move the book back to the nonfiction collection. They were joined by Penguin Random House, which published the book by author and Indigenous historian Linda Coombs.

“Colonization and the Wampanoag Story is a carefully researched, fact-based account of the Indigenous perspective of the tribes of the New England area on the impacts of European colonization,” the letter states. “Moving it to the fiction section communicates distrust of material that reflects the truths of our American history.”

On Tuesday, the Montgomery County Commission reversed the decision and returned the book to a nonfiction classification, according to messages from the group shared with The Post. The commission, which appoints the citizen committee that reviews library books, did not respond to requests for comment before the reversal or afterward.

“Colonization and the Wampanoag Story” describes the impacts of colonization on the Indigenous people who first encountered the Pilgrims in America and says that the history of Native Americans, who were kidnapped and enslaved by European settlers, is often distorted or omitted in retellings of American history.

Anne Russey, co-founder of Texas Freedom to Read Project, a nonprofit that advocates against book bans in the state, told The Post that she was glad the decision was reversed. But she said the initial reclassification seemed like a concerning outgrowth of other citizen-led efforts nationwide to restrict access to books on politicized topics.

Russey said she had never previously encountered an attempt to designate a history book as fiction.

“This feels a lot more like whitewashing or rewriting history,” she said. “And that feels really scary.”

Penguin Random House said in a statement to The Post that the decision to classify Coombs’s book as fiction was “a mistake from the outset” and that it was glad the county reversed the change.

“What unfolded in this case demonstrates the danger we are seeing again and again when political appointees ignore the expertise of librarians and any care for authors in exerting ideological control over the freedom to read,” the company said in a joint statement with advocates and library associations.

As libraries and school districts across the country grapple with what advocates have described as an unprecedented push to ban books on sexual orientation, gender identity, race and racism, Montgomery County raised alarms in Texas this year by designating a citizen committee to review and remove books challenged by community members. The Texas Freedom to Read Project and other advocates said the policy stripped librarians of the ability to oversee the books on their shelves in favor of a committee appointed by county officials.

It was that committee that reviewed “Colonization and the Wampanoag Story” after it was challenged in September, according to a response to a public records request shared with The Post. The records do not reveal who challenged the book, which details the history of the Wampanoag people, who are based in southeastern Massachusetts and made first contact with the Pilgrims upon their arrival in 1620.

The Wampanoag, who helped the Pilgrims survive their first Thanksgiving but were soon marginalized and forced off their land, have fought to promote their history and reclaim ancestral homelands, The Post previously reported. (Two Wampanoag tribes, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah, are federally recognized.)

Debbie Reese, a member of the Nambé Oweenge Pueblo tribe in New Mexico who runs the blog “American Indians in Children’s Literature,” said the targeting of a book about the Wampanoags was especially frustrating as awareness grows about their role in the history of Thanksgiving.

“(Teachers), they’ve moved from thinking, ‘Oh yeah, Pilgrims and Indians,’” Reese said. “They’ve moved to, ‘Pilgrims and Wampanoags.’ … The next move is now, ‘I need to know more about these people.’ Linda’s book does that.”

Coombs’s book, aimed at grade schoolers, includes a story describing Wampanoag life before European contact based on oral traditions and research, as well as sections describing the chronological history of Indigenous tribes in southern New England and discussion questions for readers.

The book’s Amazon page describes the series it is published under, “Race to the Truth,” as nonfiction; the series also includes titles on Black, Chinese American and Mexican American history. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) The Library of Congress included it in a list of “Great Reads” in May.

But Montgomery County removed it from its children’s books collection after it received a challenge against the book in September, under a policy that moves any challenged children’s book to 18-and-older shelves while the citizen committee conducts a review. The county reclassified the book as fiction a month later.

The committee’s reviews aren’t announced and documentation of them is not easily accessible, so few are aware when changes are made, said Teresa Kenney, a Montgomery County resident who owns a bookstore. Kenney, who first surfaced the committee’s decision, discovered the committee’s review and its decision to reclassify the book by filing a public records request.

“I was completely shocked that they would have done this, and they don’t have to give an explanation as to why,” Kenney said.

Kenney said she would keep monitoring the committee’s decisions on book challenges and push for librarians to be involved and for the review process to be made more transparent. Reese added that her blog tracks many more books by Native authors that have been banned or challenged in other states.

“To see so little empathy … for our voices to be heard through our books that can be put in libraries and classrooms, it’s just frustrating,” Reese said. “It makes me mad.”