Tuesday 23 April 2013
Thursday 4 April 2013
MARCH FOR LIBRARIES!
By Eusebius McKaiser
I grew up in a small council house in Middle Terrace, Grahamstown. I have many happy memories. And many not so happy ones. There were tough days!
Poverty is the real mother of invention. There is no need to romanticize poverty and inequality.(As a child) I spent many hours in the community library lost in books. I was lucky the library was next to our house and so I only needed to jump the fence and I was a minute away from magical worlds that looked and felt and smelt very different to my own life. I fell in love with Enid Blyton, like many millions of kids the world over.
And jelly sandwiches with my favourite characters. (Mind you, the thought was disgusting for years! Only as an adult did an American friend rescue me from ignorance – jelly for them turned out to be what we dub jam, not only desert!)
Also when I was in the library I could not be smacked by mom who was frustrated at dad’s disappearance. I wasn’t a witness to violence between neighbours. I was in a happy place Books gave me joy. The world of books helped me escape the harsh reality of a childhood located in our familiar landscape of violence, poverty and inequality.
I really was lucky. Some of my peers – and siblings and cousins – responded to our tough upbringing by dropping out of school or falling pregnant as teens. I can’t blame them. How can I know the utter hopelessness of our community that provided conditions ripe for antisocial behaviour.
I had no guidance at home, and so my reading list was very bizarre and random: in between so-called children’s book I was reading Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Virginia Andrews’s Flowers…We must read everything in our sight; we must become a reading nation…Now I’m an annoying philosophy student and part-time lecturer for life. That’s what books do. They help you find your true self.
Here is the ultimate moral of my book nostalgia, though. If we want to break down barriers between ourselves across race, linguistic and cultural lines, we must promote reading. Fiction forces you to live in other people’s worlds. It develops our empathetic capacities. Sure, reading isn’t a substitute for dismantling apartheid geography and is no substitute for living in each other’s spaces. But it can and does help to build bridges. Reading will help us to humanize each other.
These benefits require well-stocked libraries in every school and community, managed by librarians who are valued and paid due compensation for their vital role. (Originally published in The Star. Article slightly revised here)
• McKaiser is author of the best-selling, A Bantu in My bathroom
I grew up in a small council house in Middle Terrace, Grahamstown. I have many happy memories. And many not so happy ones. There were tough days!
Poverty is the real mother of invention. There is no need to romanticize poverty and inequality.(As a child) I spent many hours in the community library lost in books. I was lucky the library was next to our house and so I only needed to jump the fence and I was a minute away from magical worlds that looked and felt and smelt very different to my own life. I fell in love with Enid Blyton, like many millions of kids the world over.
And jelly sandwiches with my favourite characters. (Mind you, the thought was disgusting for years! Only as an adult did an American friend rescue me from ignorance – jelly for them turned out to be what we dub jam, not only desert!)
Also when I was in the library I could not be smacked by mom who was frustrated at dad’s disappearance. I wasn’t a witness to violence between neighbours. I was in a happy place Books gave me joy. The world of books helped me escape the harsh reality of a childhood located in our familiar landscape of violence, poverty and inequality.
I really was lucky. Some of my peers – and siblings and cousins – responded to our tough upbringing by dropping out of school or falling pregnant as teens. I can’t blame them. How can I know the utter hopelessness of our community that provided conditions ripe for antisocial behaviour.
I had no guidance at home, and so my reading list was very bizarre and random: in between so-called children’s book I was reading Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Virginia Andrews’s Flowers…We must read everything in our sight; we must become a reading nation…Now I’m an annoying philosophy student and part-time lecturer for life. That’s what books do. They help you find your true self.
Here is the ultimate moral of my book nostalgia, though. If we want to break down barriers between ourselves across race, linguistic and cultural lines, we must promote reading. Fiction forces you to live in other people’s worlds. It develops our empathetic capacities. Sure, reading isn’t a substitute for dismantling apartheid geography and is no substitute for living in each other’s spaces. But it can and does help to build bridges. Reading will help us to humanize each other.
These benefits require well-stocked libraries in every school and community, managed by librarians who are valued and paid due compensation for their vital role. (Originally published in The Star. Article slightly revised here)
• McKaiser is author of the best-selling, A Bantu in My bathroom
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