What's the Buzz about taking "The Kite Runner" off school library shelves?

 Some reflections over the reasons why the iconic novel by Khaled Hosseini, the "Kite Runner” must remain on school library shelves. I read it years ago and consider it one of my all time favorites. That it would be placed on a pull from school library shelves mystifies me.  The message I got from this semi-biographical story is of a boy engaged in one of Afghanistan’s favorite sport/pastimes. It evolves into a journey through war, loss of family, and country, to gain freedoms in a new country.  

So why the fuss from a few who are disconnected who are pursuing their own narrow agenda, while wrapping themselves with the “grand old flag?

Earlier this week, i was in El Paso TX recording resume applications for five former Afghan army men with a translator, an Afghan, US Army reservist working in Afghan resettlement. 

I turned aside to one of the men, who had a better command of English. I asked him, “Where are you from?” He responded, “I am from Kabul.” Then I asked, “Do you know, what is perhaps the most read Afghan novel, “the Kite Runner?” He said, “Yes I do, by Khaled Hosseini?” “Yes,” I said.” 

Then I said, “When you were a boy, were you a “kite runner too?” He said, “Yes, I was.”  “Did you win?” I asked. He said, “Sometimes.”

What is surreal for me is to read this increadible novel of life in Kabul over a period of 30 years involving three wars, with several evacuations from Kabul, and then meet a man who remembers fondly of his youth and childhood flying these flemsy paper and stick craft. And then, as a soldier having to flee for his life, arriving in the US to begin to resettle, and hopefully to be fully integrated into this land of immigrants, like the boy in the novel. 

Why can’t local students be given the “freedome to choose” to read this novel and be inspired by the struggle of loss of childhood, family, freedom with the fight to regain these precious gifts in a new country?