Criticism of a graphic novel available to children in Southern California libraries is defended by officials

The Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council this week debated sending a proposed letter that called on the Los Angeles Public Library to restrict children’s access to a lauded graphic novel depicting the experiences of a Vietnamese American family.

At the debate on Wednesday July 13 by the neighborhood council, the proposed letter received a split 8-8 vote, not enough to forward the letter to Los Angeles city library officials.

The proposed letter drafted by some members of the neighborhood council — a locally elected advisory committee to the city — characterized as “obscene” a 2017 book by Thi Bui, titled, “The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir.” The proposed letter asked that the book be placed in the “adult only section and not distribute it to minors as part of your Summer Reading Challenge or any other book giveaway to underage boys/girls.”

The library’s materials describe the novel as an “uplifting book” that includes themes that “will deeply resonate with Angelenos and mirror the experiences of the diverse immigrant population of the Los Angeles area.” The book was chosen by the Los Angeles Public Library for this year’s Big Read, a community-wide reading program funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The debate in Sunland-Tujunga, which drew attention on Reddit, was placed on the agenda after a local parent who sits on the neighborhood council raised concern about a giveaway of the book at her local library, according to the council’s  president, Lydia Grant.

Following a lengthy discussion, the Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council deadlocked 8-8, and the motion failed.

Some neighborhood council members argued that the book’s contents could be viewed as not appropriate for children and should not be distributed to children, while others said it was not the board’s place to urge that the book be restricted to adults and it was up to parents to decide what their children read.

Board member Karen Perdue argued that even though some might describe the book as a “great read,” it was not appropriate for “young teens … some see it as smut.”

Trevor Schmidt, another council member, dismissed characterizations that the proposed letter called for the book to be banned.

“What we’re saying is, this book with nudity and language that would not be allowed in school or allowed on public television … we want to not give this to kids, uncensored,” Schmidt said. “It can be in an age-appropriate section, but it should not be given free … it should be in the adult section.”

Neighborhood council member K.T. Travers disagreed, arguing that putting the book into “the adult-only section – that essentially is banning it to the adult-only section.”

“I don’t think that it merits relegation to an adult-only section, and I don’t think that it’s something that we should be involving ourselves in,” she said.

Another neighborhood council member, Claire Gordon, said the proposed letter would “set a dangerous precedent of appointing members of this body to censor what materials can be available to adolescents in Los Angeles based on personal preference and the values of a select few.”

The neighborhood council amended the letter to remove wording that took issue with the depiction of a pagan deity associated with Satanic religion, with some saying the council could be infringing on religious freedoms. The letter also cited pages that included profanity, sexually offensive language, nudity and “talk of pimps and hookers.”

Parents United for Happy & Healthy Kids, the group that raised the issue with the neighborhood council, issued a statement, saying that they “hope that our stated concerns encourage the library to use appropriate judgment in the future when developing children’s programming and curating children’s library materials. To be clear, we are not advocating book banning. Our intention is to protect kids and is meant for good, not for sinister purposes.”

City library officials released a statement in response to the neighborhood council vote, saying the library “offered and had great success with distributing copies of the book to teens and adults and holding a variety of programs centered around this book.”

In introductions prepared for a Big Read guide about the graphic novel, library officials encouraged Angelenos to read the book. Los Angeles Board of Library Commissioners president Bich Ngoc Cao wrote that having grown up in her family’s “Vietnamese refugee bubble” she was interested in their history, but there were few English-language accounts about Vietnamese boat refugees.

“There was no language for me to process the postwar trauma and pain that flowed through my parents’ veins into mine,” Cao wrote. Bui’s book “was the first time I’d read a story similar to my family’s, written in English.”

According to an April report by the American Library Association, which tracks book ban efforts and challenges, 2021 saw nearly 1,600 book challenges or removals. The subject of most of these books discuss or center on race, gender and LGBTQIA+ topics, according to the report.