The week my town's library board tried to pull a book on local history.

It was the Tuesday before last. I went in to pick up a hold and saw a handwritten sign on the new arrivals shelf saying 'Under Review'. It was on a book about the 1972 flood here in Cedar Falls. The board said it had 'unverified claims' about how the city handled the relief funds. I'd always thought book challenges were for other places, not my quiet town. I went to the meeting. One board member kept saying, 'We have a duty to protect our community's image.' But an older woman stood up and said, 'My father was on that relief committee. The image you want to protect is the wrong one.' They voted 4-3 to keep it on the shelf. Has anyone else had something small like a local history book get flagged? It feels different when it's down the street.

2 comments

2 Comments

jesse_cooper1mo ago

My high school pulled a poetry book in 2010. It was just some local guy's work. I figured it was no big deal, probably for a good reason. Then I read it. Just poems about his dad's factory job closing. Made me realize how quick we are to hide the boring, hard stuff.

beth_hart681mo ago

Man, that's everywhere. We hide the worn out couch with a throw blanket, crop the messy kitchen out of vacation photos. It's like we're all trying to make life look easy and clean, but the real stuff is in the grease stains and the quiet worry.