Joan was the star of the party, at least for me and my book group friend. Although Joan’s husband, a well-known artist, stood next to her, it was she who impressed us. We were delighted like fans: “Oh my God, you are a librarian! How great!” Joan smiled modestly, and her husband refilled our glasses. Nice guy. Well, not a librarian. there’s always a threat of closure.” Society can’t survive without libraries,” Joan said. And we nodded. “Right now!”
At the end of September, public libraries celebrated “Forbidden Book Week” here. He deliberately promotes all books that have been banned from reading lists and libraries in conservative school districts. There have been an alarming number this year. Even if these books are of course still available, this is a scandal, an audacity, and a chilling warning sign.
Libraries are often the only gateway to a world that can make sense. Libraries are shelters, shelters, hiding places. Not only for banned books, but for children and young people who don’t really belong, who don’t feel comfortable in their own skin, who feel there must be something else. Something they can’t name. Something you find in books.
Before I first saw the inside of the bookstore, there was the school library. Although we visited them by class and at set times, time seemed to stop there. Somehow I always managed to hide between the shelves and read books that I was not allowed to take because I had already exhausted my limit. Later, my favorite place to hang out with my best friend was the public library, which replaced us where we were too young, too cool, too brave to go there. We spent several hours there until the librarian kicked us out in the evening. We read the books we didn’t dare to pick up and became bolder and stronger. It doesn’t have to be tougher though.
Many years later, I helped out once a week in the San Francisco High School Library. Among other things, I created a crime investigation department. Most of all, I spent hours sorting books into categories. Hours, not because there were so many, but because I had to open every book and read every second. Not once did the librarian remind me to work faster, reading at work was not only allowed, but required.
And always at some point I would stumble upon a young man, locked between shelves, entrenched behind a wall of backpacks and gym bags, deep in a book. In my own world, in a protected space, in a place that made sense. Every time I wanted to trip over myself. “It’s getting better,” I muttered. “Believe me, it will be better.”