John Kenyon is the executive director of the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature organization.
Last week I read a book from the Iowa City Public Library that depicted a sex act. Actually, more than one. According to a bill proposed in the state legislature this session, it would be illegal for the library to have that book in its collection.
That’s it. The presence of one scene negates everything else in the book in their eyes. There is no allowance for context, nuance, or artistic merit. It would simply be gone.
If you listen to certain Republican legislators or groups like Moms for Liberty, you might consider what I have done to be obscene, or the book to be pornographic. They would pull out one particular paragraph without having read the entire book or even attempted to understand the context of the passage and declare the entire book a work of pornography.
It’s not. It is The Vegetarian by South Korean writer Han Kang. That name might be familiar because she was the first South Korean to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded last fall. The book, published in 2007 and made available in English translation in the U.S. in 2016, won the Man Booker International Prize that year, one of the most prestigious prizes in literature. In a 2016 New York Times review, author Porochista Khakpour said, “Han’s glorious treatments of agency, personal choice, submission and subversion find form in the parable.”
But the proposed bills would take none of that into consideration. The most troubling, Senate File 347, states, “[T]he librarian shall not select or make purchases of any materials with descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act as defined in section 702.17 for the library district.”
As with many bills put forward that seek to police the books on school or now public library shelves or the lessons offered in schools, these are blunt objects deployed not to protect but to punish. They seek to bludgeon art, culture, education, and entertainment into a bland paste that won’t bother the most easily offended among us, all while ignoring the real world in which we live.
The Vegetarian is a powerful, disturbing novel about South Korean etiquette and family dynamics. It needs the scene in question because it deftly propels the dynamics of the story forward as the characters—and by extension, the reader—grapple with issues of violence, rigid tradition, and gender roles.
If bills like Senate File 347 or House File 274 (which would repeal the obscenity exemption for libraries) become law, your reading recommendations will come from the legislature, not the librarians trained to select materials appropriate for their communities. These professionals should be able to determine whether a particular book is a vital part of a collection and meets the criteria that library uses to select material to circulate.
No one is being protected here. Third graders aren’t wandering the library stacks, pulling books with dense prose from the shelves in search of a prurient passage. Some use that image as a straw man in a quest to make all of us think twice about our choices. The real objective is to control what we access and how we think about the issues of the day—particularly those related to race, sexuality, and gender.
Another bill, House File 284, would prohibit Iowa libraries from receiving state funding if they are members of the Iowa Library Association or the American Library Association. Both organizations support member libraries by offering training, mentorship, and advocacy. Making libraries choose between state funds or peer support is yet another way to stifle thought and punish libraries for being places open to the free expression of ideas.
Bills that would limit the scope of Iowa library collections or programming should die a quick death this legislative session. There are no more important public institutions in Iowa cities and towns than public libraries, and they are what needs protection. They have been well managed, lovingly curated, and overwhelmingly supported for decades. Users need to rise up and make their voices heard before it is too late.
Top photo of the Mount Ayr Public Library (a Carnegie library) in Mount Ayr (Ringgold County) is by Chris Light and available via Wikimedia Commons.