“Everyone has at
least one good book in them” so the saying goes. What if books were actually
people, sitting right in front of you, telling you their story after you
browsed through a list of titles and picked the one that was the most
interesting to you? What if, instead of you the reader, constructing the story in your head,
you became an active listener, a witness to human experiences and growing empathy,
and an asker of questions?
Human Library
started out in 2000 in Denmark (as a visitor activity at the annual Roskilde
music festival) to challenge attitudes about violence against young people and
conflict arising from racism, prejudice and stereotypes. In this library, the
books were real human beings with their own personal stories and
experiences to share, and could be ‘borrowed’ by curious readers who may have otherwise never had a dialogue with people from diverse backgrounds in their own community.
Fast forward
over a decade later, and the Human Library now has gone global with an aim to “create more social cohesion and respect for diversity and
human rights” by supporting people to organise and create their own Living
Libraries around the world. Popular and universal titles include stories told
by refugees and immigrants, people with unusual occupations, people of
different religions, what it’s like living with a serious medical condition.
I
took part in a Living Library activity in London a few years ago, when the academic library
I worked for had its annual staff development day. I was terribly shy and utterly
stumped, besides, I was far more interested in borrowing
the human books! It is an odd thing, to objectively pull back and look at yourself, the
sum of your life and experiences, and try to pick an angle, a plot, a single
thread, that others might find interesting enough to listen to for the fifteen
minutes or so that they borrow you for.
In
the end, I think the title of my ‘book’ was something about a “Greek Kangaroo”,
and my blurb focused on what it was like growing up with two very different
cultures, feeling like you belong to both and neither at the same time, then
taking that all of that and moving to the other side of the world, to add
another layer of confusion and self-identity to the mix. Fun stuff. Talk about ‘judging a book by its cover’.
In
NSW, I found a handful of out-of-date websites from several years ago, and some
one-off mentions (including this mini-mentorship library at a past Emerging
Writers’ Festival). Only one regularly organised occurrence of a Living Library seems to be
happening; at Lismore library, on the first Friday of every month. Where are all our living libraries?
I’m curious, has your local library ever put on a Living Library event? Would you consider it for your own library? Do you have your own experience of borrowing or even being a book? What stories would you be interested in hearing?
I’m curious, has your local library ever put on a Living Library event? Would you consider it for your own library? Do you have your own experience of borrowing or even being a book? What stories would you be interested in hearing?
Australia is overflowing with stories from the fascinating and diverse people that live here. It’s a great opportunity for people to sit down and actually meet someone who they may have only heard about as an abstract idea or label, or on the news, or a statistic. One story can change the way you see everything.
-Maria Savvidis @m_savvidis
Social Media Officer, ALIA Sydney
Read
on, humans:
The
Living Library Organiser’s Guide (PDF)
