I Haven't Read Books by Cis-Het White Men for Years: I don't Miss Anything

 

Tika Viteri, I Haven't Read Books by Cis-Het White Men for Years: I don't Miss Anything. BookRiot.com July 9, 2021. https://bookriot.com/not-reading-cis-het-white-men/?fbclid=IwAR0D9yjnahMHdbJzZMZCdzyZrVQiP73IJ466wMthgZfzxExbflYwl25BUEo 

I’m one of those annoying people who taught themselves to read at age 3 (word up to Matilda Wormwood) and attempted to hide books under my pillow at night. The summer I was 5, my brother was born and I was bored, so I toddled my pre-K self half a mile down to the local library and tried to convince the librarian that she could, in fact, give me my own library card without my mom’s signature. She wasn’t having it, so I walked all the way back home, then back to the library with the completed application in hand. Someone from the local bar called my mother to let her know I was just walking around downtown by myself, and my mom said, “It’s ok, she’s going to the library.” It was a different time.

COMMENT

 I had a similar experience.  When I was 5 I wanted to get a library card for the school library, but the librarian refused to believe that a 5 year old could read.  She made me come in with my mother and read aloud from a book.  The book included the word "orphan" which I did not know and pronounced as three syllables:  "or-pa-han".   The librarian did not tell me I was pronouncing the word wrong until I had read the whole book and I nursed a grudge against her until I went to a different school. 

Can You Please Help Me Get Out of Prison

 Emily Bazelon, "Can You Please Help Me Get Out of Prison?", New York Times Magazine, July 4, 2021, pp 27-33, 47, 49.

It started with an email I received from a retired librarian in Oregon  "Dear Ms Bazelon, Karen Oehler write in July 2019.  "I correspond with an inmate, Yutico Briley, at Dixon," a prison in Jackson, La.  For a couple of years, Oehler and Briley had been writing to each other through a support program for incarcerated people. 

...

Briley mentioned that one of his favorite books was "Exodus,' the 1950's novel by Leon Uris about the founding of the state of Israel, which he borrowed from the prison library cart.  I remembered the paperback copy I checked out from the library when I was growing up.  "One of my faviore things to read about is history," he wrote,. "The book I read is old, and the pages crch when you flip them."

...

I went to law school and passed the bar, but I've never practiced law.  I decided, though I had never intervened like this before, to call a few innocence lawyers on Briley's behalf.  I wasn't sure why -- he was one prisoner among millions.  Was it because I wasn't really planning on writing about him?  Because Briley saw himself in the young men in my book?  Because he mentioned the novel "Exodus"?  I didn't know.  But hen that's often true of relationships and of stories.  One spark catches.  Maybe others follow

COMMENT

What a great library story!  Yes, there are lawyers involved, but Briley's innocence wouldn't have been  established without libraries --first, because of a retired librarian who is still involved in social justice work, and secondly, by his choice of reading that happened to establish a bond with Bazelon.  At age 19, Briley was sentenced to 60 years without possibility of parole.   He spent eight and a half years in prison before a new D.A. was elected in New Orleans who campaigned on a promise to re-examine wrongful convictions.

Invasive Species

 Rebecca Mead. "Invasive Species"  New Yorker July 2021, pp. 20-24.

In the late nineteen-eighties, Finnish researchers, led by a zoologist named Pekka Niemela, gained unusual access to a rare manuscript in the collection of the Vatican Library, "De Arte Venandi cum Avibus," or "On the Art of Hunting with Birds." The book, attributed to Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor, was made between 1241 and 1244. The Vatican's manuscript, which is in two volumes, was compiled by Frederick's son Manfred more than a decade later, after the original work was lost during the Battle of Parma.  The manuscript passed though the hands of several eminent noblemen and intellectuals before entering the papal collection in 1622. [p.23]

...

Thanks to the intercession of Simo Orma, an academic at the Finnish Institute in Rome, Niemela and a zoologist were granted permission to see the manuscript, under the watchful eye of the head librarian.  The scholars concluded that the four images were of the same bird, and, by examining the remains of pigment on the ancient pages, they ascertained the original creature's coloring.  They could also make an educated guess at the cockatoo's gender: female, as indicated by reddish flecks in the iris of its eye.  [24]

COMMENT

 The presence of an Australasian cockatoo in a one-of-a-kind ancient book reveals historic trade connections.  The picture was detailed enough so that researchers could determine the color of the actual bird, something that they probably could not have learned from a digital image.   Since the Vatican Library is not public, researchers needed special permission to see the book.