Let's Write about Little Free Diverse Libraries

Echo report published in #BookRiot, by Stacey Megally

Spontaneous, honest, and joyful expressions happen when kids recognize themselves in books.

Little Free Diverse Libraries

Like, when a girl and her mom visited a Little Free Diverse Library in Arlington, Massachusetts. If you haven’t yet encountered a Little Free Diverse Library (LFDL) in your neighborhood and are wondering what it is, it’s exactly what you think: a Little Free Library (LFL) dedicated to keeping books by BIPOC authors and about BIPOC stories in its collection.

Little Free Libraries (LFL) have been beloved by avid readers since they first started popping up more than a decade ago. We love spotting the charming, wooden boxes at parks, on walking trails, in front yards, and other places in our cities. Not only is the idea of taking and leaving books a clever way for us to celebrate our love of reading and stories, but it’s also a way to connect with others. In fact, it’s become such a significant part of many readers’ lives that we’ve accumulated a trove of posts specifically about Little Free Libraries at Book Riot.

Little Free Libraries are beloved by avid readers.

They first started popping up more than a decade ago. We love spotting the charming, wooden boxes at parks, on walking trails, in front yards, and other places in our cities. Not only is the idea of taking and leaving books a clever way for us to celebrate our love of reading and stories, but it’s also a way to connect with others. In fact, it’s become such a significant part of many readers’ lives that we’ve accumulated a trove of posts specifically about Little Free Libraries here at Book Riot.

But there are ways to improve on even the things we love most — especially when you take some time to truly examine them. When it comes to Little Free Libraries, it’s time for us to ask ourselves if we’re truly celebrating all stories and if we’re making our best effort to connect with all people. Research indicates that Little Free Libraries tend to be located in mid- to high-income neighborhoods whose residents are well-educated and overwhelmingly white.

Last spring, when lifelong book lover and New York County public school counselor Sarah Kamya strolled her predominantly white neighborhood, stopping to browse at the three Little Free Libraries she passes every day, she noticed something for the first time: a clear lack of books by BIPOC writers telling BIPOC stories. This, Kamya decided, was an issue she could do something about — and that’s when Little Free Diverse Libraries was born. Now the movement, which has spread all over the U.S. and to a handful of other countries, is rapidly growing and evolving every day.

So, how did Kamya grow Little Free Diverse Libraries into what it is today? Where does she hope to take it?

Most importantly, how can we, as readers, get involved? 

In my search for answers, I reached out to founder Sarah Kamya as well as to several LFDL distributors and owners around the country to get their insight.

How the Little Free Diverse Libraries started:

At the end of May 2020, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, Kamya had an idea about how to use Little Free Libraries to help educate her community about Black perspectives.

So, she began raising money to buy books by Black authors from Black-owned bookstores in order to diversify all of the LFLs in her town of Arlington, MA. She created an Instagram account (@littlefreediverselibraries) and an Amazon Wishlist and then began sending books to her friends in other cities and states, so they could diversify LFLs in their communities.

“I never expected LFDL to take off and at the speed that it did,” Kamya told me. “It felt like in one moment I was sitting at the table with my parents sharing my idea, and the next there were 500 books on my dining room table, and I was sending books to every Little Free Library in the United States.”

Because of the overwhelmingly supportive response, Kamya achieved her goal of sending diverse books to every LFL in the country, in just two months.

In fact, Little Free Libraries were diversified in all 50 states, plus several were “dedicated specifically to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) voices.”

Little free diverse libraries today:

One year after Kamya started LFDL, it’s become a nonprofit organization, which she named Diverstories. “LFDL has impacted my life significantly,” Kamay told me. Not only has she had to learn to balance her full-time job as a counselor with running a nonprofit, but she can also “no longer go into bookstores without purchasing a book to put in a library” or “pass a Little Free Library and not stop to check out what books are inside.”

After working with more than 100 individuals and ten schools to add diverse literature to the Little Free Libraries, Kamya has been able to connect more deeply both within her own community and with readers all over the country, and is amazed at “how spreading diverse books through Little Free Libraries can form such deep connections, thoughtful conversations, and inspiring stories.”

One example that stands out to Kamya happened at Forest Hills High School in Queens, New York, which received a granted library from Kamya. I reached out to Lindsay Klemas (@fhhslibrary), the librarian at the school, who related her perspective on this story to me as well. Klemas held a LFDL opening ceremony to which she invited a handful of students she hadn’t seen in many months due to the pandemic. Klemas told me that one of the students she invited “had become very withdrawn” in a way that was derailing her path to graduation. “This event allowed them to get back on track and ultimately graduate.” To Sarah Kamya, that story confirms that “the Little Free Diverse Library project spans beyond what I ever imagined, and can touch people in so many ways.”

Kamya also enjoys watching everyday reactions at the LFDL at her house in Arlington. “I can look out and see when people are stopping by the library. It is always amazing to see the kids and families.” She also loves that her visitors take time to look through the books and discuss them. “They are able to teach lessons, and educate themselves right there in that moment.” Kamya told me.

Where were Little Free Diverse Libraries headed?

Now that LFDL (Diverstories) is a nonprofit organization, Kamya has plans to expand her original vision.

As a school counselor at a Title I school in New York City, Kamya understands “how important it is for students to not only see themselves in literature, but have access to quality diverse books.” So, one of the most important ways she plans to grow Diverstories is to implement Little Free Diverse Libraries inside and outside schools across the U.S. She’s planning to start in NYC, an area that, unlike many suburbs, has fewer than ten Little Free Libraries. “With more libraries,” she told me, “there is more access to literature, and one can form a greater love for reading.”

Kamya also plans to work with “community centers, organizations, hospitals, and companies, to broaden their collection of diverse literature.” Some of the ways she’d like to bring this vision to life are by distributing diverse reading material to waiting rooms and staff lounges as well as by providing suggestions for staff required reading.

As Diverstories continues to grow, Kamya would like to “curate book lists that people turn to throughout the year. I hope these book lists can inspire, educate, and celebrate diverse voices.” After all, Kamya told me, “There is always a place for diverse books.”

How you can get involved in little free diverse libraries: If you’re feeling inspired to help Kamya bring diverse stories to your community through Little Free Libraries, there are several ways you can get involved:

Support: Donate money online. Your monetary gift will help Little Free Diverse Libraries collaborate with Black-owned bookstores, install LFDL at schools, send books to distributors, and more.

Donate books through their Amazon Wishlist. Purchase from a collection of books curated by Kamya and they’ll be shipped directly to her, so she can distribute them to LFLs in Massachusetts and New York.

Give 10% of your Bookshop purchase. 

Diverstories has its own store set up on Bookshop.com, the online store that supports indie book sellers. All you have to do is shop the site the next time you’re picking up books for yourself, friends, family, or even your own favorite LFL, and 10% of your purchase will automatically go to Diverstories.

Become a distributor or Little Free Diverse Library owner:

If you’d like to stock LFL structures in your community or you want to build your own LFDL, you can fill out this Google form and LDFL will get in touch with you.

Create a Little Free Diverse Library in your community. 

Construct and maintain your own box with LFDL’s guidance.

Like every worthwhile project, becoming an LFDL distributor and/or owner takes passion, dedication, and flexibility to navigate the challenges you may face on your way to realizing the rewards of this important work.

Let's report about religion news

Writing about religion is not a monolithic or uniform subject. In  other words, "religion news" is inclusive of spirituality and faith, as well as reporting about the challenges faced by people who choose to practice a religion, or not: 

Echo essay by Daniel Burke*, published in America Magazine, the Jesuit magazine: 

Review: Reporting on religion can be dark. But we need people on the God Beat more than ever.

When people asked me why I chose to be a religion reporter, they usually got one of two answers. One was my official response; the other was the truth.

The official response ran something like this: Religion is a force that moves billions of people, for better or worse. You can’t really understand our world without understanding religion.

That’s true, but it is not why I became a religion reporter. The real answer was more personal. I was on a quest for the truth and saw journalism as the means to a free, or at least modestly subsidized, education. I think this idea was stolen from Pete Hamill, who advised young writers in New York to apprentice in one of two story-rich fields: driving a taxi or journalism.

My plan worked at first. During my nearly 16 years as a religion reporter, including the last eight at CNN, I learned more than I could have hoped. But over time, the stories other religion reporters and I tackled grew darker: religious violence, racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism; the lies, crimes and casual cruelties of the Trump administration; the rise of QAnon and demise of truth; the Catholic sexual abuse crisis; and, of course, the pandemic. 

Moreover, people’s pain, and anger and confusion seemed fathomless, institutions hopelessly self-involved and religious leaders willfully blind and enthralled by politics or fame. 

In any other era, such a beat would be challenging. For me, in our relentlessly online culture, it was deflating. By the end of my time at CNN, I was a beat reporter.

I thought about all of this while reading The God Beat: What Journalism Says About Faith and Why It Matters. The anthology of 26 essays is edited by Costica Bradatan, a religion editor for The Los Angeles Review of Books, and a professor of humanities at Texas Tech University, and Ed Simon, a staff writer for the literary site The Millions and author of several books about religion and morality.

In their introduction, Bradatan and Simon say they are most interested in what Simon dubs New Religion Journalism, a literary movement that they argue was given life by Killing the Buddha, an online journal of religion writing for “people made uncomfortable by church.”

Like New Journalism, the movement heralded by wizard-suited Tom Wolfe in the 1970s, (and before him, by Matthew Arnold in the 1880s), New Religion Journalism prioritizes the personal, including the reporter’s subjective experience in the story. 

More importantly, argues Simon, New Religion Journalism questions the “theism/atheism” binary and displays the “full ambiguity and ambivalence of belief.”

That ambiguity is explored in Leigh Eric Schmidt’s deeply researched essay, “Monuments to Unbelief,” which guides readers on a short jaunt through 19th-century atheism and introduces characters like the miraculously named Octavius Frothingham.

In “Amma’s Cosmic Squeeze,” Erik Davis muses about the title character’s trademark gesture—a hug—as a “quietly subversive transformation of traditional South Asian worship” as he stands in a Disneyland-worthy line awaiting his sacred embrace. But Amma, who has hugged more than 26 million people, is not only about silent subversion, Davis reports: “During her massive fiftieth birthday celebration in 2003, which was inaugurated by Indian president Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, Amma cranked through a stadium full of devotees for twenty-one hours straight, while a scoreboard racked up numbers well into the five figures.”

Cool scene. But, as I said, these are dark times, and many writers in The God Beat address topics like death, hatred, abuse and decay.

In “Will Anyone Remember Eleven Dead Jews?” Emma Green ponders the paradoxical satisfactions of an archivist in Pittsburgh, who was charged with collecting artifacts from the worst anti-Semitic attack in American history. 

Likewise, Shira Telushkin’s essay, “Their Bloods Cry Out from the Ground,” is a powerful meditation about the murders in 2018, of those 11 people while they were worshiping and the task of those left behind. 

Telushkin explores the work of the chevra kadisha, the Jewish burial society charged with collecting different kinds of remains. They slipped quietly into the crime scene, scraping blood from walls and floors, burying their martyrs just as Jews have done for millennia.

The best essays in The God Beat are like this—quietly reflective, deeply informed, subjective but not solipsistic (aka "egotistical"). Instead, they combine an insider’s knowledge with an outsider’s practiced observation, transcending the limitations of both third- and first-person writing.

As a one-time Catholic, Patrick Blanchfield brings an insider-outsider perspective to his essay on the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal, written in 2018, a few weeks after a grand jury report in Pennsylvania described in detail decades of soul-crushing sexual abuse committed by priests against children. Blanchfield raises a question that perhaps only an ex-Catholic would voice. Namely, is there something inherently Catholic about the Catholic abuse scandal?

“Whatever the problems of ‘society’ more broadly, it is impossible not to see in these horrors a very particular Catholic feature: tropes, however twisted, of penance, mortification, and punishment, concepts and ritual items wielded as tools of abuse,” Blanchfield writes. “These priests, in other words, did not just rape children using their hands, mouths and genitals. They also raped them using their faith.”

Prophetic advice for the victims of clergy abuse.  

Behind this rhetoric lies the force of truth. I have heard many victims of sexual abuse by clergymen recount how their abuse and lost innocence amounted to “soul murder,” as Blanchfield titles his powerful piece.

The essay reminded me of another, coincidentally published on the same day in America. Kerry Weber, an executive editor at America, wrote about the questions she pondered, as she read the Pennsylvania grand jury report while her children napped. “I have found myself truly afraid of what it means to ask and to allow my children to be part of the church,” Weber wrote.

Reporting for CNN, I had been chasing the “hard news”—counting the victims, tracking down perpetrator priests, trying (and mostly failing) to hold bishops accountable. Weber’s voice—singular, plaintive, coming from within the fold—whipped my head around. Behind all the hard news, this is what the scandal has wrought, I realized: a mother afraid to raise her children in the church she loves. And that is a story that needs to be told.

*Daniel Burke is a contributing editor at Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. He previously covered religion for Religion News Service and CNN.

Let's write about pandemics: Post COVID on Earth

Dora Anne Mills, MD, MPH
"Not-So-Brief COVID-19 Update"

#vaccinate

Dr. Mills has been publishing the "No-So-Brief" throughout the pandemic, reporting news with her opinions and medical scientific information.

Sunday, July 4, 2021
A Day to Celebrate

Dr. Dora Anne Mills:  Chief Health Improvement Officer for Maine Health

Although this weekend is a time for celebration, there are times when grief and sadness are overwhelming. Recently, running into so many friends and family whom I’ve not seen for months, I realize this yo-yoing of emotions is common. Everyone seems excited to be emerging from the pandemic cave. But everyone is also carrying the burden of loss - loss of loved ones, loss of a job, loss of a former life.
I’m also amazed at how many are making major life changes. People are leaving their office careers. They are choosing instead to farm, to quilt, to fish. Many who are maintaining their jobs are also taking up previously unheard-of hobbies, often related to nature or making things by hand, such as beekeeping, gardening, bird watching, knitting, or cooking. People are deciding not to have children or to have children. Gap years are now routine. It seems as though collectively we’re experiencing an existential crisis, and we are seeking more meaning.

The reasons for such a crisis are obvious. The pandemic uprooted everyone’s lives. Climate change’s worsening is palpable, and now without question directly impacting our daily lives. Political strife is dividing families and friends. Racism’s wounds are gaping.
Despite the yo-yo of emotions and despite the existential crisis, I’m optimistic. History is on our side. As I shared some details in a post on June 8, 2020, accelerated changes for the good emerge from pandemics’ tragedies. The Black Plague that started in the mid-1300s, led to the death of an estimated 60% of Europe’s population. But it also led to the dismantling of the feudal system and ideas, replacing it with the Renaissance. Disproportionately wiping out serfs, who worked in close quarters producing food for the merchants, priests, and kings, the plague exerted unfathomable losses. But the resulting labor shortage meant serfs could negotiate for their wages, and eventually some freedoms. Additionally, as people realized that the practices espoused by doctors and priests did not protect them from the plague, many started questioning prior beliefs. The dismantling of the feudal system and questioning of long-held beliefs contributed to a re-awakening that was a catalyst for the Renaissance.

The 1918 influenza pandemic, intertwined with World War I, also resulted in enormous labor shortages. In unprecedented numbers, women joined the workforce. Although the 19th Amendment (women’s suffrage) had been introduced over 40 years earlier, it finally was approved by Congress in the summer of 1919, sent to states for ratification, and was finalized in the summer of 1920. Clearly the rise of women in the labor market, catalyzed by the pandemic and the war, contributed to its success. Additionally, as people tossed their masks away, loosened their Victorian era corsets, and threw their weapons down, they exchanged them for cigarettes, knee-length dresses worn by flappers, movies, planes, and faster cars associated with the Roaring Twenties. The end of the pandemic and war didn’t return society to “normal”, but rather to a new normal, with novelty and breaks with tradition.

Likewise, the HIV/AIDS pandemic extracted a tragic toll, especially on young gay men. But the heartbreak of this loss, the stigma associated with the infection, and the inaction by government also ignited activism that paved the way for many rights and celebrations, including marriage equality and Pride month.

History shows us that out of the tragic ashes of pandemics, there are periods of extraordinary innovation and creativity. However, with the pandemic still burning in most of the world and with variants emerging that even threaten us in the U.S., why am I so optimistic? Because we have the tools to extinguish the pandemic fire! First, vaccine is the water to extinguish the pandemic fire. But even with the Delta variant causing those who are fully vaccinated to pause, we know from scientific studies from the last 16 months, that masking, ventilation, distancing all work to synergistically - especially with vaccines - to protect us. These form the major slices of the “Swiss cheese strategies” of layering protective measures so the virus cannot escape through any one layer’s holes, as it is blocked by the next layer.

As an aside, yes, we seem to be getting conflicting information on masking, but we’re really not. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends masking, even for those who are fully vaccinated. However, their audience is global. With only 11% of the world’s population fully vaccinated, and half of the world’s countries with fewer than 5% fully vaccinated, it is important that safety measures such as masking are generally maintained. Yes, the vaccine is protective and an effective fire suit, but as Dr. Fauci has said, that doesn’t mean one should walk into a fire with it. Most of the world is very much on fire with the pandemic, which means in most of the world, even those who are vaccinated should adhere to additional layers of protection, such as masking, distancing, and ventilation.
By contrast, US CDC guidance for the fully vaccinated is that we do not need to mask. With 47% of our country’s population fully vaccinated, the situation is far different from most of the world. Our incidence, hospitalization, and death rates are the lowest they have been since near the beginning of the pandemic in April of 2020. Here, the pandemic fire is simmered down. In most situations, the fire suit of vaccine is sufficient, and additional protective layers such as masking are not needed.

Nevertheless, there are exceptions. For example, in places like Los Angeles and St. Louis, where the disease rates are high or rising, and vaccine rates low, it makes sense to advise for additional layers of protection, even for the fully vaccinated. Again, the vaccine is a fire suit, but if you’re in the fire of a pandemic, you want additional layers. You want more layers of Swiss cheese so there are no holes the virus can escape through.

What does that mean for us in areas of the country with high rates of vaccine and low rates of disease? Officially, yes, the advice is that we don’t need to mask if we’re fully vaccinated. I agree with that. However, especially given the rise in variants such as the Delta strain with increased contagiousness, the rise in disease incidence in areas of rural Maine (where vaccine rates are lowest), and with those <12 not yet eligible for vaccine, there are situations I would consider masking, even if fully vaccinated. I am inclined to mask if I am indoors or in a crowded outdoor setting with a group of people I do not know their vaccine status or if they’re known to be mostly unvaccinated (e.g. a group of young children).

There are also places everyone must mask, as per federal guidance or rules. They include all healthcare and public transportation settings as well as many schools.

Back to other reasons for our collective existential crises and why I’m optimistic. What about climate change? Climate change is clearly one of if not the single biggest threat to our existence. Those of us over 50 remember when the weather was not making headlines every week. And the headlines are increasingly reminiscent of the Biblical descriptions of the battles of Armageddon. However, here again, science has opened up our tool box. We know much more about what is causing climate change and how to address it. Many of the technologies to replace fossil fuels have improved in effectiveness and cost. Political and public appetites for addressing climate change have grown. It is still very unsettling and we are far from overcoming the grave threats that climate change is presenting. 

However, we have many of the necessary tools in place.

What about political polarization and racism? Our country and our world have survived many analogous struggles with related political strife over the centuries, including those in previous peri-pandemic periods - the struggles of the serfs for freedom from slavery and for self-determination, the struggles of women to vote, and the struggles of gay people for equal rights. Although we are far from declaring victory on the struggles against political strife and racism, many of the tools are in place to address these more successfully - a wider recognition of the harms of these issues as well as an increasing collective desire and variety of options to address them. As Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

I am convinced that we will return to a new normal and this is also a time for celebration. We need to acknowledge the grief, the losses of this last 16 months - the people we lost, the celebrations we lost, the former life we lived. It has been a very difficult 16 months for all of us. But even if we feel weak, we are also stronger than 16 months ago. We may have wounds that need healing, but we have also slain dragons. We are stepping into a new normal, and importantly, one which we can create.

The founders of this country declared independence on this day 245 years ago. However, July 4, 1776 was not the end of the Revolutionary War. Many battles were fought before and after the Declaration. The Treaty of Paris wasn’t signed by the U.S. and Great Britain until 1783. The U.S. Constitution wasn’t fully adopted until 1788. But July 4, 1776 is the day we celebrate.

Indeed, today is the day we should celebrate and be grateful. That doesn’t mean there are not undertows of grief. That doesn’t mean there won’t be additional battles. We are far from signing a treaty with the pandemic. But do have our weapons - masking, distancing, ventilation. And most importantly, we have our own Declaration of Independence - Vaccination. Indeed, we have a bright future ahead of us and reasons today for celebration.