Libraries. I was raised as a card-carrying lover of libraries. My mother, an avid reader, took me to the library frequently when I was very young. The cool calmness and the smell of them is still comforting to me. Their allure is simple - a place to hide out, to escape. I always felt safe at the library. A library is perfect on a lazy, hot summer afternoon. I can still remember the books my mother and I checked out. I must have been about three or four at the time, and my mother was teaching me how to read. My mother liked quality literature, and we read many Caldecott award winning books. We checked out books like Harry the Dirty Dog, The Best Nest, Sam and the Firefly. And a few of my mother's sentimental favorites - The Velveteen Rabbit and The Giving Tree. She always cried when she read those books to me. Now that I'm older, I understand. And I cry too.
As I grew up, she steered me toward Laura Ingalls Wilder, Harriet the Spy, Nancy Drew mysteries. It occurred to me the other day just how formative those library visits were and how much those specific books, under her guidance, shaped me. They formed my worldview and made me the person I am today. Many of those adolescent books - Nancy Drew and the others, featured plucky, independent and inquisitive female protagonists. They were smart, they were observant, they were capable and resourceful. I grew up wanting to inhabit those characters (and also to be a spy). They encouraged me to believe I could do anything I set my mind to and I haven't wavered from that belief yet. The more poignant ones, The Velveteen Rabbit and such, created my moral foundation, honed my empathy and insight. I believe that my mother, in her infinite wisdom and with her subtle hand, chose the books for every one of those reasons.
I continued to seek out literature on my own after that, discovering Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and the Native American writer, Louise Erdich. And Amy Tan. And the dripping, delicious prose of Latino playwright, Octavio Solis. These, and many others, inspired my passion for racial justice and greater cultural sensitivity and respect. It was the ability to see though another's eyes and walk in their shoes that broadened my awareness of the world outside my little bubble. To this day, reading is essential to me. Reading is how I grow, how I learn, how I heal. Books inform what I value and how I behave. Just knowing that I'm not the only one in this world experiencing certain emotions, facing certain challenges. That it is all part of the human experience is eye-opening and comforting beyond belief.
And books have absolutely, at times, saved my life.
Now a school district in Houston is doing away with school libraries, turning them into "discipline centers" and multi-purpose use. This piles onto the terrifying movement to ban books, particularly "woke" books, like many of those I've mentioned here. There is an undercurrent in all this that truly scares me - namely that we are losing our democracy, the rich diverse tapestry of stories that make up this nation.
And if that history is rewritten and white-washed, by the, in my opinion, fascists who promote this, we are over. It amounts to collective, cultural gaslighting.
Some days, I'm glad my mother is no longer alive to see this.
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