NEW
Library Project
Volume 4, Number 1 - Fall 2005
Expanding
the Circle of Belonging
by Patricia Andres
In a recent poem, Palestinian-American writer
Naomi Shihab Nye asks the question: “What lines should we all / be
crossing?” In an interview
in Poets and Writers, she
expands on that question: “Every person’s intimate circle of loved
ones, familiar zones, expands out to a larger collective circle ….I
think we’re paralyzed emotionally and spiritually if we keep a line
between what ‘you’ and ‘yours’ includes.”
People and Stories—Gente y Cuentos is about crossing lines and
working to deconstruct them. Assumptions about formal education are the
invisible dividing lines we cross when we bring James Joyce’s stories
into community groups of new readers where the discussions are deep and
intelligent. Stereotypes about gender are among the borders crossed when
we debate a 19th-century feminist text by Kate Chopin in a men’s
correctional facility and participants ask to read more of her work.
Social, educational, and cultural divisions loosen when Princeton
University students join our groups at Trenton’s Rescue Mission for
formerly homeless men and members share interpretations of stories by
Alice Walker or Ernest Hemingway.
Other lines that divide, while even less
visible, are important ones to see. Such a line appeared recently at a
learning center in northern New Jersey where Alma Concepción, Gente y
Cuentos coordinator and program manager, was conducting sessions with
Spanish-speaking adults learning English as a second language.
One day when Alma was washing her hands in the
ladies’ room, the woman who was cleaning there remarked: “I have
something to say to you. Can you give me your materials?”
“My materials?” Alma responded. “My
materials are stories.”
“Yes, the stories, that is what I want.”
Rosa, who is from Colombia, listened to the
Gente y Cuentos readings and discussions while she scrubbed floors outside
the classroom door. She waited every week for Alma, who talked with her
about the stories, gave her copies and asked her what she thought. At the
end of the eight weeks Rosa asked Alma to send stories to the director of
the center so she could be sure to pick them up. The literature crossed a
border; now we need to work on creating an even more inclusive community
of those invited to the discussions. We need, that is, to find ways for
Rosa and people like her to join the group.
In Montgomery County, outside of Philadelphia,
as we work with outreach librarians to establish a new program for Mexican
immigrants, we’re finding that the local community center is the way to
go. The library, where we had planned to conduct the series, is not within
walking distance of the participants we want to reach, and most of them
don’t have cars. Similarly, as we launch a new program to bring
participants into Trenton neighborhoods from the surrounding affluent
suburbs, we may need to attend to details such as carpools and directions
to help build the bridge between unfamiliar communities.
As a grassroots, public literature program we
work to widen the circle of those touched by great stories. And, along
with Shihab Nye, we want to expand that “familiar zone” so that people
can change the range of what “you” and “yours” includes.