by: Paul R. Benson
On April 5th, at 1:00pm in the Student Union, Parkland’s Diversity Committee and Office of Human Resources hosted Parkland’s first Human Library Event! The event was like a collection of diverse conversations. The aim of the event was to address people’s prejudice by having them talk with people they wouldn’t normally meet. The audience members or ‘readers’ listened to personal stories from the human ‘books’ on loan, with time after the storytelling for questions and dialogue from the audience.
Each book shared a room when they told their story, which caused a slight overlap of noise. There was also a volunteer who would hold up a ‘5-minutes left’ sign, a ‘1-minute left’ sign, and a discussion questions sign. Each person roughly had 15 minutes to tell their story and 10 minutes to answer questions, but no one was forced to follow this guideline.
There was a large diverse group of participating books who told their stories. People told their stories about being Black and Queer, stories on homelessness, mental health, racism, stories from Refugees, Muslim life in America, and many others. There were so many interesting topics to choose from it was hard to pick only a select number of stories to listen to. It was comforting to see so many voices being heard, when not everyone has a platform to talk about the serious aspects of our identity.
Since I was a book at the Human Library, I could only pick two people to listen to before I had to speak. I’m glad I got to listen to the two books that I chose. The first book I checked out was Joe Omo-Osagie’s, How I became a black man in today’s America. There was a range of topics to talk about since Joe’s entire life is a book. It was hard to talk about only one chapter in somebody’s life especially since there were so many chapters leading up to where they are today. Within a short period of time, I feel I only got a glimpse into Joe’s experience moving from Nigeria to America. Joe explained how he felt in-between white expectations and black expectations of his Identity as an African living in America. He knew that he had to be careful around the many existing prejudices in American society. He also explained his parents’ divorce, Catholicism, and briefly touched on the racism in Nigeria from British colonialism. I left his discussion late and I didn’t want to leave, because I was intrigued to know more.
Next, I checked out Tanino Minneci’s, Beyond the Rainbow. Tanino’s story almost had me in tears. He talked about coming out as gay during the aids epidemic and homophobia from the Reagan Administration. It didn’t help that he came from a family of Roman Catholic Sicilians. He recalls instances where he would think about suicide and attempt suicide instead of coming out. He was running in the streets hoping to get hit by a car. His brother was killed by a car at a young age, and Tanino realized he didn’t want his parents to go through losing another son. Tanino’s mother still isn’t fully accepting of his identity, but Tanino hopes she will eventually come around like his father.
“It was great to talk about our experiences, but it was not easy”
Telling my story was tricky, especially after the emotional rollercoaster of Tanino’s story. I didn’t prepare right before; I went straight to my section after listening to Tanino. I was surprised to see a lot of friends and some strangers. There were only supposed to be 8 people per book, but there were at least 9 people listening to me. I was a bit sweaty from working out earlier and by that time I was nervous and sweating even more. Overall it went well. I talked about my short experience of dating extremely wealthy older men when I was 18. It’s a story I rarely share with others, my family doesn’t even know. I then briefly talked about abusive relationships I’ve been in and enduring years of abuse. Not a very easy story to talk about with a group of people. After my time was up, my friends gave me hugs. One friend of mine was crying, which made me almost tear up as well, but I knew they’d be alright after a hug and letting them know I’m alright. While the first talk was very intense the second talk was with 3 people and was much more relaxed.
After the event, everyone seemed emotionally exhausted. It was great to talk about our experiences, but it was not easy. I followed other books upstairs to receive a thank you plant. I now have a cute Jade plant by my window. One book who I talked with said they wish there was a recording of everyone’s story so that they can listen to some of the books that they missed. I would have also liked to hear some of the stories I missed. This was a great event for Parkland, and I hope we can do this again in the future.
