On Thanksgiving, as we reflect on family, friends, food, and the joy and need of the community congregation, I want to take a moment to give thanks for some of the most meaningful times I’ve had in my life, time alone in a quiet space: my time in libraries.
In an era of increasing book bans, library funding cuts, and even bomb threats, it seems that now, more than ever, I must make clear how valuable and central libraries have been to my life and success.
The first library I entered was at my primary school. We were allowed to go there for an hour once a week. I remember marveling at the space: a rectangular room lined with wooden bookshelves, crammed with books from floor to ceiling.
I remember thinking as a child that I was in a cave of books written by people across time and around the world, that each volume probably contained thousands of ideas, and I wondered how I could get all those ideas into my head.
I was a mission-driven reader. I wanted to know things, all of them. I craved facts, instructions, knowledge. But I wouldn’t willingly read nonfiction narratives until required, and I wouldn’t enjoy them until college.
Maybe it was because of the small collection of books we had at home, gathered in a small homemade bookcase in the hallway, about four feet square and three shelves. One shelf held an encyclopedia—white with red stripes on the binding and red lettering on the cover—while the others were random books my mom grabbed when the high school library thinned its stacks at the end of each year.
They were all reference books. It was what I imagined all books to be. I read encyclopedia entries all the time. It was the modern equivalent of going down a rabbit hole while surfing the web.
If we had a public library in town I would have spent my days there, but we didn’t. The closest was eight miles away in Arcadia, Louisiana. In fact, the town where I grew up — Gibsland, named after a man named Gibbs who had a plantation there — only opened its own library this year, nearly 140 years after the town held its first election.
Ironically, Gibsland is now a dying town, whose population has been dwindling for decades. About half the people live there today — 773, to be exact, according to the 2020 Census Bureau — than there were in the year I was born.
But especially for this type of person, who lives in rural areas, libraries can be an amazing tool. When I was a senior in high school, I won a spot at the International Science and Engineering Fair. That year, 1988, it was being held in Knoxville, Tennessee. It was my first time flying and my first time traveling away from home.
Determined not to expose myself as a redneck, I went to the library in Arcadia and checked every etiquette book on the shelves. They were familiar to me—reference books, rulebooks that, in my mind, were the only thing standing between me and a semblance of refinement and sophistication. I devoured those books.
I guess you could say that all of this information can now be found online, but high-speed broadband isn’t as ubiquitous as you might think. In 2019, the Pew Charitable Trust explained that the number of Americans without broadband “could be over 163 million”, and that included 40% of schools and 44% of adults in households with incomes below $30,000 (R $159.2 thousand).
I must applaud the Joe Biden administration for using billions of dollars of American Rescue Plan funding to help close this digital divide, but for those who still don’t have high-speed internet, libraries help bridge the gap.
Still in college, it was in libraries that I found myself, not only physically, but spiritually. It was in college library books that I first saw and read about openly queer people, that I first read about the Stonewall riots and the gay rights movement. The books were kept in a corner of the library that hardly anyone seemed to visit, but I went there often.
In the piles, I learned that my difference was not anomalous. Up until that point, even in college, I had never met anyone who was openly gay.
And years ago, when I was writing my first book, I found myself in the main section of the New York City Public Library not because I needed to do research – it was a memoir – but because the space itself seemed more in line with the task. of writing. It was like going to church to pray.
These are just some of the ways libraries have touched my life. In fact, I can’t imagine getting to this point in my life without them. And I’m grateful for that.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
