The Fairfax County School Board turned down a request by the mother of a former high-school student to stop including Toni Morrison’s acclaimed 1987 novel Beloved in Advanced Placement classes.

Laura Murphy attempted to have the book removed from the curriculum after she said her son, who was a student last year at Lake Braddock Secondary School, endured nightmares after reading Morrison’s graphic depictions of murder, sexual abuse, and other unsettling scenes in the tale of a family of former slaves in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Murphy’s first request to get rid of Beloved was turned down last year, but she appealed the decision all the way up to the superintendent. According to school board rules, Murphy’s request would only be considered after at least four people on the 12-member board read the book and agreed to take her complaint under advisement.

In a letter to Murphy yesterday, school board chairman Ilryong Moon informed her that while eight members reviewed Beloved, fewer than four were willing to consider her appeal. Moon wrote that the decision is final.

During Murphy’s campaign against Beloved, members of Lake Braddock’s English department came to the book’s defense, writing in a letter to the local Parent-Teacher-Student Association that novels of an uncomfortable nature—like Morrison’s—should be taught in classrooms:

In offering books like the ones a handful of people are now trying to ban at Lake Braddock—respected and widely-lauded titles like Toni Morroson’s Beloved, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (all of which have been endorsed by the College Board, which administers the Advanced Placement program that Lake Braddock participates in) we are not trying to unduly upset students or their parents, and we select book titles based on literary merit and the appropriateness to the course.

Students in Fairfax County schools can elect to sit out certain books if they are made uncomfortable about the subject matter. Murphy’s son, now a college freshman, did not decline to read Beloved last year, though he did quit halfway through. A Lake Braddock English teacher tells DCist that Beloved is not the only book Murphy has tried to see removed from the school district’s curriculums. She also attempted to strike The Road, Cormac McCarthy’s 2006 post-apocalyptic novel, and Obasan, Joy Kogawa’s tale of Japanese-Canadian residents interned during World War II.