Challenging our Epistemologies: Reading as a Radical Act

I have always been a reader. I regularly hear that being a librarian must be the perfect profession because librarians get to read all day. The reality, however, usually is more like seeing thousands of books I want to read and maybe getting to read one or two.

Not working full-time for the past 16 months has had one major privilege; the opportunity to read voraciously. To say I have eclectic reading tastes in an understatement. I get my reading lists from wandering through bookstores, combing through lists like “ What Columbia University Business School professors are reading this summer”, New York Times bestseller lists, and browsing through library catalogs. A big thanks and a shout out to the Los Angeles Public Library and their fabulous collection for providing copies of the books that interest me.

These 17 non-fiction titles, along with 14 novels, are the books I’ve read during June/July 2019

Brené Brown. Braving the Wilderness

Ron Chernow. Washington a Life

Kate Fowler: Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I Have Loved

Joanne Freeman. Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to the Civil War

Mona Hanna-Attisha. What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story Of Crisis, Resistance, And Hope In An American City

Lindsey Hilsum. In Extremis: The Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin

Janet Mock. Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More

Khalil Gibran Muhammad. The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America

Michelle Obama. Becoming

Susan Orlean. The Library Book

Anne Gardiner Perkins. Yale Needs Women: How the First Group of Girls Rewrote the Rules of an Ivy League Giant

Ben Rhodes: The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama Whitehouse

Eric Rutkow. The Longest Line on the Map: The United States, the Pan-American Highway, and the Quest to Link the Americas

Adam Rutherford. A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes

Norma Stevens & Steven Aronson: Avedon: Something Personal

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective

Tara Westover. Educated

Each title has informed my understanding of the world but more importantly has challenged my beliefs and my ways of knowing/understanding people and culture. Reading challenges my own understanding of epistemology.

I first encountered the concept of epistemology in an introductory Philosophy course during my first semester of university. Basically, epistemology is the study of the nature of knowledge and how we know. Since the rise of the Age of Reason during the 17^th century, much of the Western epistemological framework has been based on rationalism, rather than feelings/emotions, our senses, or religion. While this rationalistic epistemology strengthened the role of science and fact-based inquiry and dominated the universities, religious and cultural epistemology did not disappear. Many people continued to frame their way of looking at the world through a cultural and religious epistemological lens; sometimes also embracing parts of rational epistemology, sometimes eschewing it.

There is a battle over epistemological frameworks in today’s society. The rise of fake news and the rejection of scientific proof around issues like climate change and medicine represent a rejection of a rational epistemology in favor of any number of cultural, personal, or religious epistemologies. The epistemology we adopt frames our ways of looking at others, at culture, at politics, and at science. We may consciously or unconsciously espouse an epistemology of oppression that marginalizes others.

As I have pondered these issues through the lens of what I have been reading, I think that our epistemological frameworks can be challenged and changed through reading and critical reflection. Reading can be a radical act because it can challenge our epistemological frameworks. It can and should cause us to stop and ask, “why do I see others [insert any group, race, ability, orientation, etc. here] in this particular way?” Why do I see them as less than me? Why would I consider causing them harm? Why do I see my way of framing the world as superior/correct and theirs as inferior/wrong? Reading can help us understand the historical and cultural context for the past but also provide us the freedom to break from that context to make the world different going forward. Reading can help us surface epistemologies of oppression.

One of the values that academic libraries can bring to the intellectual discourse on campus is to purchase books that inform, challenge, and motivate; books that go beyond mere support for the curriculum to books that provide intellectual collisions. Rather than just shelving these titles in the stacks, libraries must look for ways to engage the community through reading and dialogue. Libraries must become active partners in providing the campus a place and resources for intellectual dialogue, engagement, and critical reflection.

The Brazilian educator and philosopher, Paulo Freire, felt that the purpose of reading was to allow us to “read the world”, to interrogate it for meaning in order to understand the world.

Put your understanding of epistemology on an intellectual collision course. Read some books that challenge your world view!

Life in two column inches: ALA Annual 2019

Recently my daughter and I attended the American Library Association Annual Conference in Washington, DC. Besides the myriad of sessions, vendor exhibits, and a chance to catch up with colleagues from across the country, there were some significant and interesting speakers. I always come away from ALA not only with excitement about our profession, but the realization that libraries, librarians, and library staff are people who care deeply about making a positive difference in the world, often for people who are marginalized, dispossessed, and overlooked by mainstream society.

Being in the nation’s capital is always a pleasure. The city has an international vibe and is so rich with culture, history, and political intrigue.  A couple of highlights for me was having my picture taken with Dr. Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress, 

and seeing the Obama portraits at the National Portrait Gallery. 

A visit to DC is not complete, of course, without a visit to the world’s largest library; the Library of Congress. We scored a visit to several of the specialized reading rooms (African, Asian, European, Hispanic, and Rare Books & Special Collections) as well as attended a reception for international librarians. The breadth and depth of these collections is truly amazing). Because we are truly library geeks we went back a second time to get our own “Reader’s Card” and to visit the main reading room. Truly a tribute to the idea of library as temple of knowledge. 

 

Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, talked about her life and the children’s books she has been writing.  Her forthcoming book “Just ask!: Be different, be brave, be you” was written to help children who the world perceives as different to accept and celebrate themselves, and for the rest of us to not prejudge them. She demonstrated her humanity and compassion by coming down off the stage and wandering through the audience, shaking hands with hundreds of people, while her Secret Service guards looked on in stoic disapproval. Kudos to this Latina justice.

At the Readex Breakfast, Joanne B. Freeman, a US historian and tenured Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University gave a fascinating talk about her latest book “The Field of Blood: Violencein Congress and the Road to the Civil War.” Given the raucous and uncivil behavior in congress and the Presidency today, Joanne showed that this stands in a long tradition of bullying, intimidation, name-calling, and violence that has long been part of the US Congress.  Researched and written over 17 years Dr. Freeman showed the lengths to which Southern Congressman used intimidation and violence (guns, bowie knives, canes) to get their way. Northern Congressman in turn armed themselves and became fighting men; willing to give as good as their southern counterparts.

One of our favorite events at ALA is the LibraryReads Author Breakfast.  This year’s “Fiercely Female” breakfast featured five incredible authors: Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House (Flatiron/Macmillan), Amaryllis Fox, Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA (Penguin Random House/Knopf), Alice Hoffman, The World That We Knew (Simon & Schuster), Anne Gardiner Perkins, Yale Needs Women (Sourcebooks), KarineJean-Pierre, Moving Forward: A Story of Hope, Hard Work, and the Promise of America (Harlequin/Hanover Square Press). Each woman spoke about their work and their motivation to tell their stories (two novels, one history, and two personal narratives).  I came away with copies of each of the five books and a realization that these were stories that only a woman could tell. Kudos to each for their courage to change the world.

The inimitable George Takei once again took to the stage as an auditorium speaker at ALA.While for many he is best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the USS Enterprise in the television series Star Trek and the six Star Trek movies, he is also an activist for LGBTQ rights. This year he talked about his experience as a young boy, imprisoned with his parents in a Japanese-American internment camp in the swamps of Alabama during World War II. While he and his parents’ rights as US citizens were being violated, every day in school in the camp the interred children stood and pledged allegiance to the US Flag, “with liberty and justice for all”. In order for people not to forget the wrong that the US government did to Japanese Americans and to educate a new generation, Takei with an illustrator and storyteller, is turning his story into a graphic novel; They Called Us Enemy. For him it is important, given the internment camps of migrants on the border, to recall the hypocrisy of the government both to citizen and immigrant alike.

While in DC I was listening to the audiobook version of Michelle Obama’s Becoming.  Having heard her speak in 2018 at ALA in New Orleans, it was a must-read. While I was struck by many things in her life and experience, I was taken with a section near the end of the book where she talked about some of the hateful things that were being said in the run-up to the 2016 election.  She emphasized that “words matter” and that it was important to stand up to bullies. Words of hatred and dismissal were not what America was about.  

The closing session featured Mo Rocca, an American humorist, journalist, and actor. He is best known as a correspondent on CBS Sunday Morning, the creator of My Grandmother’s Ravioli on the Cooking Channel, and the host of Innovation Nation. One of his most recent creations is a podcast series entitled “Mobituaries”, a series based on obituaries. I was struck by his reason for doing these podcasts; a chance to tell a story about a life not captured in 2 column inches.

The preceding paragraphs narrate a few of the highlights of the most recent ALA annual meeting. For me the speakers are not just a series of interesting people but are illustrative of at least one of the many roles of the library, to make a difference in the world.  Libraries tell untold stories, they uncover hidden secrets, they inspire creativity, innovation, and scientific discovery. Libraries are neither neutral nor passive. Libraries are radical spaces.

Libraries help us resist marginalization, racism, intellectual arrogance and blindness. Libraries keep us from reducing our life and the lives of others to two column inches.