Sunday Reflections: How Libraries Can Help Communities Write a CAN DO NARRATIVE, reflections from the Wisconsin Library Association annual conference

I never once ever imagined that I would visit Wisconsin, and yet this week I did and it was amazing.

The conference began with an opening keynote from Rich Harwood of the Harwood Institute where he discussed Reclaiming Main Street. Honestly, this was a great and inspiring keynote. The main point was simply this: librarians are especially equipped to go out into their communities and help those communities write Can Do Narratives. We provide access to the resources that can help our communities learn, thrive, and move forward in positive ways.

We need more stories about how libraries help communities come together not just stories about how fab libraries are #WLA14

— Linda (@lindalouj) November 5, 2014

We need “Civic Parables” – we can do good things, our work is never done #WLA14

— TeenLibrarianToolbox (@TLT16) November 5, 2014

Loving this keynote on building community: shared responsibility, we need to create can do narratives, kids need to feel valued #WLA14

— TeenLibrarianToolbox (@TLT16) November 5, 2014

Later, I would listen to Melody Clarke and Laura Damon-Moore discuss the ALS Mobile Makerspace. You can visit their website for all of the information. I have to tell you, this is such a great way for a system to create a Makerspace with not a lot of money and without having to redo their entire floor space. It’s an example of a library system seeing a need and finding creative ways to meet those needs. They didn’t have the space or money to convert the library, so they came up with a creative solution that fit within their system’s given infrastructure and budgets but still allowed them to provide innovative and educational programming.

In the afternoon I was honored to hear Book Riot’s Kelly Jensen (@catagator) and author and #SVYALit Co-Moderator Carrie Mesrobian (@CarrieMesrobian) speak about Good Girls, Bad Girls, Real Girls: Teen Girls in YA Lit & in Your Library. We live in a day and a time where there are lots of great and meaningful conversations happening around the topics of girls and how they live in this world. We can read and participate daily in some fantastic discussions. I know that my news feed and my behind the scenes conversations are constantly engaging in a wide variety of meaningful conversations that cover a variety of topics including #YesAllWomen, #NotJustHello, #WhyIStayed, #GamerGate and more. And it’s not just Hashtag feminism (as Time magazine called it) that is happening, but a wide variety of people like authors A. S. King, Anne Ursu, Maureen Johnson and Carrie Mesrobian (to name just a few) are openly challenging us all to think about how we portray girls in literature, how we talk about girls in the media, and how we view female sexuality. Kelly Jensen did a fantastic series investigating the gender make up of the bestseller lists, further highlighting many of the challenges that women face not only in the world, but in the YA literature world. These topics, which are such prevalent conversations in the current media – especially among YA librarians and book bloggers – were the focus of their presentation. At one point during the presentation the woman I was sitting next to, Monica, leaned over to me and said, “I like this Carrie. She is very intelligent. I like the way she says things.” That about sums up the awesomeness of this discussion. And as an important corollary, people like The Good Men Project are having some of the same important conversations about how gender stereotypes affect our boys (and they do).

“Reading saves-we needs kids to have more empathy, to see different perspectives” – wise words from @CarrieMesrobian

— TeenLibrarianToolbox (@TLT16) November 5, 2014

When I approached Carrie, Christa and Trish about doing the #SVYALit Project, it was during our planning that they said you know, we really need also to talk about the need for positive sexual experiences in YA literature; because if we’re going to talk about what sexual violence is, teens also need to be reading about what healthy sexual experiences look like. As Carrie said as part of her presentation, yes there should be sex in YA literature because teens are thinking about and talking about sex. They can get access to porn in a simple click of a button any time they want to, but porn doesn’t contextualize sex; it doesn’t let you look inside the minds of the people who are engaging in sex the way a book does and allow you to see what they are thinking and feeling.

Why we need sex in YA: It gives teens context of the internal dialogues – more wise words from @CarrieMesrobian

— TeenLibrarianToolbox (@TLT16) November 5, 2014

Carrie also talked about how adults continue to try to talk to teens based on their own terms, and yet teens are thinking about these topics much differently than most adults do (or did). For example, many teens today don’t think in binary or stereotyped gender terms, and yet adults are trying to communicate with teens using these terms. This was further highlighted on my flight home. At the Atlanta airport the bathrooms didn’t just have a traditional male and female sign, it went a step further by having the girls sign lighted pink and the boys sign lighted blue. This was not just a binary viewpoint, but a traditionally stereotyped viewpoint. And yet we live in a world where Facebook allows you over 50 ways to identify yourself as opposed to simply male/female, where teens are writing to corporations and requesting that we move beyond gender stereotypes, and where the general culture is starting to talk more about moving beyond traditional gender stereotypes and identities.

It all goes back to serving communities, as Harwood mentioned. It’s not about us. It’s about the people we serve. It’s about their needs and their stories. If we’re going to write Can Do Narratives for our communities, if we’re going to help our communities be successful as a whole by helping the individuals within those communities be successful, then we have to respect them all and give them the tools to write those stories. We have to respect our boys. We have to respect our girls. We have to respect everyone who identifies in ways that we may not yet fully understand. We have to respect them regardless of their race, their education, their income, or their religion. Every individual has different needs, every community has different needs, but when we really work to discover what those needs are and meet them then we can write those Can Do Narratives.

This past week I met a lot of passionate people in Wisconsin who were working hard and creatively to help their communities succeed. They shared innovative ideas. They shared their struggles (staffing, budgets, resources). They shared their hopes, their dreams, and sometimes their fears and failures. But more than anything what they shared is this: a drive to make the world a better place by respecting and empowering the people who lived in the communities that they were going back home to.

Filed under: Sunday Reflections