World Language Materials at Public Libraries

I work at a public library and sometimes I check out materials in Vietnamese language for my friends to read. Last year, I checked out a couple fiction books that were written by authors in Vietnam. The stories were written about love during the war. The stories depicted characters from the "Communist". Well, some my friends were shocked that this kind of material would be allowed in the library. Since the Vietnam War, the refugee communities in the US and other part of the world have been very sensitive regarding materials that depict political issues. It was a controversial debate among friends. Some think that just because a few characters in the stories were Communist, the book shouldn't be banned from the library. Others, on the other hand, think that the library should be more selective on materials since they are serving the refugee community and should be more sensitive toward this group. In other words, they shouldn't have this material at all.

I would agree that the library should be more selective too. The problem with foreign language materials selection is that most of the time libraries hire a person to select from a language that he/she doesn't speak thus the choices are not always the best to add to the collection.