⚠️ Spoilers ahead! Watch the series on Peacock.

Peacock’s Bel-Air not only united the original Ashley Banks with the new Ashley Banks, but the reboot drama united them in a storyline highlighting the near erasure of Black literature in the classroom.

The show is a serious portrayal of the 1990s NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air that brought rapper Will Smith to the silver screen. The new version stars Jabari Banks, who has an uncanny resemblance to Will and holds the fictional last name of the TV family in real life. It’s still the same story of a Black teen boy from West Philadelphia who must move to the upscale Los Angeles enclave of Bel-Air with his aunt and her immediate family to stay out of trouble.

Tatyana Ali, who played Ashley in the sitcom, made a guest appearance in the second season of Bel-Air by playing teacher Ms. Hughes to the reimagined version of her former character Ashley, played by Akira Akbar.

At the elite Bel-Air Academy, Ms. Hughes gives Ashley a book, The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland, by Robyn C. Spencer, in the premiere episode “A Fresh Start.” Ms. Hughes asks for a two-page summary, which is an extra credit assignment since the book is outside of the curriculum.

In the second episode “Speaking Truth,” Ms. Hughes hands Ashley another book after class. This time, it’s I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown. A White classmate glares at their exchange in the background. The look of disgust on the classmate’s face shows the concern that Ms. Hughes is showing Ashley more preference because they’re both Black. Soon, we learn a complaint has been filed against Ms. Hughes. And it’s not the first.

When Ashley later bumps into Ms. Hughes in the hallway with a box of her effects inside, she asks why the teacher is leaving. Ms. Hughes gives Ashley words of encouragement, but Ashley is obviously devastated that her favorite teacher, one of the very few Black teachers in the school, is gone.

Ashley tells her parents Vivian, played by Cassandra Freeman, and Phil, played by Adrian Holmes, about Ms. Hughes’ firing. They discover that Ms. Hughes was let go over providing books outside of the approved curriculum at a parent advisory committee meeting. Vivian even lists the authors Ashley is now exposed to because of Ms. Hughes’ influence, such as James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Toni Morrison, and Paula Giddings.

Will, Ashley’s cousin, and Carlton, Ashley’s brother played by Olly Sholotan, get involved by bringing the issue to the high school’s Black Student Union in an effort to keep Carlton elected as class president by maintaining the Black student vote. A protest comes up as the best response to Ms. Hughes’ firing. Except Carlton has a chance to win the school’s highest student award and be the first Black student to win the award. The BSU adviser, who is Black, dissuades Carlton to plan the protest; it’s not worth sacrificing the award over a fired teacher who wasn’t following the rules.

The third episode “Compromise” shows the BSU dealing with the administration’s threat to suspend them all if members and allies walk out during classes. Then Carlton and BSU president strike a deal with the administration: Students can walk out but can’t make speeches or hold signs. The middle school students like Ashley are already barred from participating in the walkout.

On the day of the walkout at 11 a.m., Carlton leads participating students to the quad in protest of not only Ms. Hughes being fired but also in support for a more inclusive curriculum. The pressure to go against the compromise made with the administration revs up Carlton’s anxiety. Will says he has Carlton’s back as he takes a large sign and runs up staircases to end up on the roof. He unrolls a sign that reads “Black Teachers Matter.” With a raised fist, he starts the chant “Black Teachers Matter.” Students below join in the chant.

According to Tatyana’s Instagram post, this episode is her last appearance, so the Ms. Hughes storyline may end there. But how students are walking out in protest over demanding inclusive curricula is an example of art imitating life.

Students in Virginia walked out last fall due to Governor Glenn Youngkin’s transgender student policies. Last month, students across Florida walked out to protest Governor Ron DeSantis’ plans to defund diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at colleges and universities.

At the root of the issue in Bel-Air is that a Black female teacher mentored a Black female student by giving her books that would never be read in the classroom or approved for a syllabus at a predominantly White upper-crust school. But the mentorship was severed by complaints from other classmates not getting the same attention.

To be fair, unfairness should be reported in situations like classroom settings where teacher favoritism could affect your grades, but that part of the conversation is not discussed. The repercussions of firing a Black teacher over providing Black stories go deeper with dismantling a literary mentorship that had already opened a student’s mind.

One in five Black or African American private school teachers worked at schools with less than 25% enrollment of students of color, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That shows how rare a relationship is between a Black teacher and a Black student at a predominantly White private school.

Out of 3,420 children’s books in 2021, 36% were “books by and about Black, Indigenous and People of Color,” per data from the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the School of Education, University of Wisconsin–Madison. As books by authors of color seem to see higher rates of bans and attempts at bans, students of all backgrounds may not know about those books if they’re not available to them at school or the public library. Hence, Ms. Hughes giving Ashley books on the side to read that explore the experiences and identities of people of African descent is viewed as an act of defiance.

Although the storyline is rooted in students demanding a more inclusive curriculum, the issue of approved literature impacts many educators who are currently witnessing conflicts with some of their local and state regulators restricting what is taught in classrooms.

With the impact of the anti-Black racism protests last month, some of the celebrity-founded book clubs kept the focus on Black stories as others chose the top books of the summer including reads perfect for the beach (if it’s open) and texts exploring gender and sexual identity.

AMERIE’S BOOK CLUB

You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat

The debut novel features a Palestinian American girl who is yelled at by a group of men for showing her legs on a trip to Bethlehem. The experience eventually allows her to tell her mother she’s queer as she moves to different spaces to find her true self.

“I rooted for her and hurt for her as she tried to find her way through one bad decision after another,” Amerie wrote on Instagram. “The main character, whose name is never revealed, stayed with me long after I closed the book, as did her hope for yet another shot at love.”

BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB

The Dragons, The Giant, The Women: A Memoir by Wayétu Moore

The author of She Would Be King and founder of nonprofit One Moore Book has a new memoir about her experience living through the civil war in Liberia. At five years old, she’s waiting to be reunited with her mother, who’s studying in New York, then her world is turned upside down with the war. Her family flees on foot from their home and get smuggled across the border of Sierra Leone, where they get a chance to fly to the U.S.

Belletrist, founded by actress Emma Roberts and producer Karah Preiss, also chose the Black woman-owned Semicolon Bookstore in Chicago as its indie bookstore of the month.

GMA BOOK CLUB

Sex and Vanity by Kevin Kwan

The Crazy Rich Asians series creator’s new book takes place on the island of Capri with a half-Chinese, half-White woman trying to fall for the well-off White man her family likes while avoiding another man, who is Chinese, she keeps suppressing her feelings for.

“It’s a summer escape full of travel, food, fun and fashion,” Kevin told Good Morning America. “The outrageous characters will make your crazy families seem almost normal.”

KAIA GERBER’S BOOK CLUB

Darling Days: A Memoir by iO Tillett Wright

Born female, the author comes of age in downtown New York with a young widowed mother and adopts the persona of a boy amid the 1980s “intersection of punk, poverty, heroin, and art.”

“In talking to him about his experience publishing this book, he taught me that writers who happen to be queer too often are dismissed as ‘queer writers’ and their books, regardless of the topics they cover, end up exclusively stocked on ‘LGBT author’ shelves,” Kaia wrote in an Instagram post. “Darling Days goes far beyond this—it is a story about neglect, creativity, internalized homophobia, and the beauty you can make out of pain. it is a New York story of growing up and out of the life you are born into.”

NONAME’S BOOK CLUB

Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis

Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex by Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith

Rapper Noname picks Are Prisons Obsolete?, a book that calls for the abolition of prisons and how it will benefit society as a whole. The homie pick, Captive Genders, comes from Che Gossett. It studies trans and gender-queer people in prison with the most recent version including a foreword from CeCe MacDonald, who was imprisoned for killing a transphobic attacker, and an essay by Chelsea Manning, the former U.S. Army soldier who transitioned amid getting sentenced for espionage.

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB

Deacon King Kong by James McBride

This novel tells the story of a church deacon who shoots the neighborhood drug dealer point blank range in front of the community and the aftermath.

“In naming Deacon King Kong my latest Oprah’s Book Club selection, I am hoping readers will find in it what I did: sorrow, joy, resilience, humanity, and an understanding that while we struggle with pain and trauma, we can find shelter in one another—just as the characters in the Cause housing project in McBride’s Brooklyn do,” Oprah wrote in the Instagram announcement.

READ WITH JENNA – TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB

Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan

Jenna Bush Hager’s book club via her Today Show gig is one of the hottest books of the season. The main character is a new mother who hires a college senior as a baby-sitter. As they grow close, the baby-sitter’s relationship with the mother’s father-in-law leads to a betrayal.

“I wanted to explore American life in the pre-Trump years and sort of how we got here,” the author said in an article introducing the book club pick. “The book very much digs into the gig economy, the shrinking safety net and the notion that privilege takes many different forms.”

REESE’S BOOK CLUB

I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

After the book club delayed its selection announcement in June, actress Reese Witherspoon directed her book club to make two selections—a first to recognize current events. Both books will be read over June and July.

“Elevating women’s stories is at the core of Reese’s Book Club. I love how this community champions the narrative for women and we are just getting started,” the book club placed in a graphic on Instagram. “Unity and understanding through the lens of storytelling is how we will continue these meaningful conversations.”

Readers expressed their disappointment in the comments over the book club adding a book by a Black woman author last minute and not pushing back the book by a White woman author to another month.