Kalona patron requests library book’s removal

KALONA — Members of the Kalona Public Library board of directors plan to tackle a hot-button issue at their next meeting on April 11: whether or not to ban a book from its catalog.

The conversation comes after a patron submitted a formal “Request for Reconsideration,“ for the book ”Gender Queer,“ a bestselling memoir by Maia Kobabe that describes the nonbinary, non-heterosexual author’s process of self-discovery, written and illustrated in a graphic novel format. Some pages of the book depict sex acts in its illustrations. The 2019 autobiography was the most frequently challenged book of 2021, according to the American Library Association.

Kalona Public Library Director Trevor Sherping said the institution heard roughly 10 complaints per year about the content of various materials, but that the latest was only its third formal, written complaint on-record, following others in 2016 and 1993. It is the first such request calling for a book’s outright removal, rather than its reclassification to another library section.

The complainant said that Kobabe’s book was, “Designed with graphics and message to appeal to minors, even though it is overtly pornographic, and goes into graphic detail of bizarre sexual acts,” in their request form, which also said the work contained ideas harmful to young readers and contrary to Christian values.

“It has the potential to draw minors into re-identifying themselves by their sexuality, and contribute to the alarming rise in child depression and suicide,” claimed the written complaint from a community member whose identity library staff cannot disclose, and who declined an interview request from The Union sent through a library representative. “As a pastor with a number of young families at our church, I feel a duty to the next generation to protect them from the messages of self-doubt and questioning the way that God created them.

“I want to help build a community where our kids are safe and loved, and just the way God made them. Books like ‘Gender Queer’ put our kids at risk.”

The complainant wrote that they did not read the work in full, but that they “paged through the book and didn’t have the stomach to read all of it.”

Library Director of Youth Services Olivia Kahler said she was skeptical of the complaint’s premise that Kobabe’s book appealed to children.

She said younger patrons were unlikely to check the book out in the first place thanks to its placement in the adult nonfiction section of the library.

“The book is advertised as 18 and older, and it is shelved correctly,” she said. “Kids are curious creatures, and they wander through the building as they might, but I’ve yet to see a child purposefully go to adult nonfiction, the most boring of locations, and pick a book.”

Additionally, the library’s collection policy says responsibility for minors’ checkout materials “rests with their parents and legal guardians,” and that, “Selection of materials for the library collection is not restricted by the possibility that minors may obtain materials their parents consider inappropriate.”

Other parts of the library’s 12-page collection policy emphasize what it calls “freedom to read,” following suggested guidelines from the American Library Association. The rules make it difficult to ban materials, with one clause explicitly stating, “It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept the prejudgment of a label characterizing any expression or its author as subversive or dangerous.”

Many clauses of the collection policy are equally blunt about removal requests that cite allegedly harmful ideas within library materials.

“We believe that free communication is essential to the preservation of a free society and a creative culture,” reads another part of the guideline, which is posted on the library’s website. “We believe that these pressures towards conformity present the danger of limiting the range and variety of inquiry and expression on which our democracy and our culture depend.”

“Gender Queer” is hardly the only book depicting sex or controversial matters in the library’s collection. However, staff said requests for reconsideration happened on a title-by-title basis, meaning a hypothetical ban of Kobabe’s memoir would not inherently put other works on the chopping block.

“The slippery slope is an argument that a lot of people … who defend keeping items in the library, they rely on that because it’s hard to define where you draw the line,” Sherping said. “The thing I would say is, when it comes to questions of appropriateness or morality, that there is not a single answer, and that what you feel might not be what somebody else feels is appropriate.”

Sherping said the final decision would rest with the library’s board members, but that he personally saw no reason in the library’s collection policy to approve the removal request.

He said the book was likely appreciated by some members of the community as much as it was criticized by others, and that the latter group had no obligation to read it if they disagreed with its content.

“Part of our mission is to have an inclusive and diverse selection,” he said. “That necessarily means that not everybody is going to agree with every book that’s cataloged, but that does not diminish its merit … There are people in the community who would need this material, or find it relevant to their life. I think it would be naive to think that we don’t have an LGBTQ population here.”

Others, including the author, have criticized widespread movements to remove “Gender Queer” from library shelves, saying books about LGBTQ matters were especially necessary for the members of the marginalized community.

Those critics argue that the book is a resource for people — especially for older kids and young adults — that are already questioning their identity, rather than a cause for them to start doing so.

“Queer youth are often forced to look outside their own homes, and outside the education system, to find information on who they are,” Kobabe wrote in a 2021 editorial for the Washington Post. “Removing or restricting queer books in libraries and schools is like cutting a lifeline for queer youth, who might not yet even know what terms to ask Google to find out about their own identities.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com