To celebrate its 40th year anniversary of grant making, programming, and partnerships that connect Californians to each other, California Humanities invited a group of 40 prominent Californians to explore what the humanities mean to them. For more information visit California Humanities: We Are the Humanities.
]]>Luis Rodriguez, Poet Laureate of Los Angeles in 2014, explains how his love for books and libraries rescued him from a life of trouble. He notes that through books, he discovered more about people and their lives, which encouraged his interest in writing about injustice and activism.
To celebrate its 40th year anniversary of grant making, programming, and partnerships that connect Californians to each other, California Humanities invited a group of 40 prominent Californians to explore what the humanities mean to them. For more information visit California Humanities: We Are the Humanities.
As a middle school librarian, I fell in love with Young Adult literature, books written for teens between the ages of 13 and 18. When I am asked why I seldom read “adult” books, I respond that I believe that some of the best books—both fiction and non-fiction—written today are being published for teenagers. In my defense, I am quick to cite numerous studies that indicate between 48–52% of the YA books being checked out at public libraries and purchased in book stores or online are to readers over the age of 24, in other words, readers like myself. What does that tell us? That these books written for teens possess value and quality for people of all ages.
In 2017, I had the opportunity to serve on the Michael L. Printz Award committee for the American Library Association. This prestigious award is administered by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) and sponsored by Booklist. The winner and honors must exemplify literary excellence in young adult literature. Over the course of 12 months, I worked with a committee of eight other librarians from across the US. As a committee, we read hundreds of novels, biographies, and non-fiction titles written for teens. We convened online and in person, wrote about the books we had read, and in February of 2018 met in Denver to decide which titles we would select for the Printz Award. After two days of intense debates, we chose diverse five titles. The committee selected We Are Okay by Nina LaCour as the winner of 2018 Printz Medal and recognized four books with Printz Honors: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, Vincent and Theo by Deborah Heiligman, and Stranger the Dreamer by Laini Taylor.
As the awards were being announced at the ALA conference on February 5, I sat in a packed auditorium as tears rolled down my face. And why is this my Humanities Moment? Because this moment validates what I have always felt about YA literature. My experience on the Printz Committee and the five books we selected affirm two of my core beliefs—that some of the best books being written today are being published for teens and that anyone, young or old, can find beauty and meaning in the pages of YA. As a middle school librarian, I remind myself that I have the power to hand a student the right book at the right time in his or her life, a story that might change a life forever. And that is the power of literacy for teens….showing young readers a pathway to the future and inspiring them with hope and promise.
]]>I was born and grew up in rural Southern Appalachia. Books and stories were my pathway out of the holler and into a world of hope and possibility. As a child and teen, I read and listened voraciously, and those stories found in books helped to save my life. Without them, I am not sure where I would be right now. During my early years as an adult, I searched for a career that would pair my enthusiasm for literacy and literature with my profession. I finally found that perfect match as a librarian.
As a middle school librarian, I fell in love with Young Adult literature, books written for teens between the ages of 13 and 18. When I am asked why I seldom read “adult” books, I respond that I believe that some of the best books—both fiction and non-fiction—written today are being published for teenagers. In my defense, I am quick to cite numerous studies that indicate between 48–52% of the YA books being checked out at public libraries and purchased in book stores or online are to readers over the age of 24, in other words, readers like myself. What does that tell us? That these books written for teens possess value and quality for people of all ages.
In 2017, I had the opportunity to serve on the Michael L. Printz Award committee for the American Library Association. This prestigious award is administered by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) and sponsored by Booklist. The winner and honors must exemplify literary excellence in young adult literature. Over the course of 12 months, I worked with a committee of eight other librarians from across the US. As a committee, we read hundreds of novels, biographies, and non-fiction titles written for teens. We convened online and in person, wrote about the books we had read, and in February of 2018 met in Denver to decide which titles we would select for the Printz Award. After two days of intense debates, we chose diverse five titles. The committee selected We Are Okay by Nina LaCour as the winner of 2018 Printz Medal and recognized four books with Printz Honors: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, Vincent and Theo by Deborah Heiligman, and Stranger the Dreamer by Laini Taylor.
As the awards were being announced at the ALA conference on February 5, I sat in a packed auditorium as tears rolled down my face. And why is this my Humanities Moment? Because this moment validates what I have always felt about YA literature. My experience on the Printz Committee and the five books we selected affirm two of my core beliefs—that some of the best books being written today are being published for teens and that anyone, young or old, can find beauty and meaning in the pages of YA. As a middle school librarian, I remind myself that I have the power to hand a student the right book at the right time in his or her life, a story that might change a life forever. And that is the power of literacy for teens….showing young readers a pathway to the future and inspiring them with hope and promise.
It seems from my early consciousness, the humanities were an ever-present part of my being. The son of sharecropper's children, neither which possessed a high school education, they crafted a deeply humanistic perch from which I could view the world. From Durham and Salzburg, North Carolina, respectfully, the search for what Isabel Wilkerson has called the "light of the suns" resided in the conscious and unconscious recesses of their mind.
Possessing none of the benefits of class, race, and gender privilege, my mother harnessed the power of a book. A small library composed of encyclopedias, great books, contemporary literature and magazines, nestled in the study between the living room and master bedroom.
In the den, this middle space, where I did my homework daily, was where dreams were made and humanistic visions forged. It seems that all that would come was previewed there. A close reading of the Bible, deep droughts from the wells of encyclopedia Britannica, the great books and great performances, from Bach to Berlin.
My father cultivated in me his love of politics and sport. In the basement, he regaled us with Isaac Hayes, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and the Whisperers on 8-track tapes. As we basked in the melodic cadences of the songs, Mohammed Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, James Foreman, or Tommy Hickman Herms, or Leonard Spinx could be seen on the console television, weaving their pugilistic magic in the ring.
If the basement and study, upper and lower rooms, represented two distinct poles of reality, then the kitchen served as the temple to politics. There my father read the newspaper and watched the nightly news. It was his insistence that politics mattered, which fueled my subsequent interest in political conventions. I watched my first political convention in 1976, and I continue to do so up to the present day.
Convinced that being humanistic entailed civic engagement, my parents always took my brother and I with them to vote in local, state and national elections. It was a ritual of sorts. We obligingly piled into our old 1968 Pontiac Bonneville, arriving at Campville Elementary School, our neighborhood polling place in Baltimore County, Maryland. Once there, they would park the car on the road, and we would watch them make their way through a gauntlet of poll workers, who showered them with campaign literature of one sort or another. Undaunted, they proceeded into the polling place, and stayed for what seemed an eternity. Emerging together as if they had crossed the finish line of a marathon, we could see the exhilaration and the importance of this act.
It was a logical extension of the humanistic constructs in our home. Contact in eventful and uneventful ways, my upbringing among organic intellectuals, a Gramscian designation would surely apply to my parents, shaped my interests in direct and indirect ways.
By the mid-80s, armed with a deeper and more informed sense of my racial sense and my humanistic responsibility, I too became involved in political campaign. As election day approached, we received our poll assignments. My assignment was none other than Campville Elementary School. I arrived early to my post on election day. A lean, lanky boy of 17, I was wise in the arts of politics, canvassing and poll work. The voters came slowly, and then steadily, through the gauntlet of poll workers who handed them literature, and generally cajoled and prodded them to vote for one candidate or the other. All the faces seemed to blur, until I looked across the yard and saw my parents, parking in their familiar place and proceeding to the gauntlet. As my parents proceeded, I felt the weight of the years passing before me, remembering my passive position watching my parents, and present one as an active participant. Now, in our reverse roles, all was clear. As they approached, I beamed with pride. I hugged them, and gleefully announced and introduced them to the assembled throng as my parents.
I knew in that moment all the years of watching, listening, engaging, thinking in our den and basement and kitchen had prepared me for this moment. A moment electric with the preparation of the past, the participatory urgency of the present, and the humanistic possibilities of the future.