JOY AS AN ACT OF RESISTANCE

Creating space for balance and joy in the Library Learning Commons and the Upper and Middle School curricula

By Elyse Seltzer, Director of Library Services

This year’s theme, Finding Balance, Finding Joy, aligns perfectly with the Brimmer Libraries’ goal of ensuring that our collections and resources feature protagonists that are identity-affirming, display agency, and represent the diversity of our School and global community. I believe that people should be able to find joy in all parts of their identity, and I want everyone to feel celebrated. In my role as Director of Library Services and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) Curriculum Liaison, I achieve this through the books I purchase for the library, the resources I put out to the community, and by collaborating with colleagues on curriculum.

I developed a similar goal for my work as DEIB Curriculum Liaison based in part on the School’s Strategic Priorities 2020 & Beyond, which promises to “review and revise our current curriculum through a lens of cultural sensitivity.” This school year, we also published a three-year DEIB Strategic Plan. In it, we strive to “assess the Curriculum for representation of a range of identities and regions” and “support implementation of inclusive and equitable teaching practices.” I am particularly interested in these two priorities. To support the curriculum in grades six through nine with research and resources, I work closely with teachers to ensure their curriculum aligns with the range of identities in the School. I’ve found that it is much easier to plan an inclusive curriculum when you know you have the materials to back it up.

I also collaborate with colleagues on strategies for implementing inclusive and equitable teaching practices, including incorporating anti-bias teaching practices. For example, in a humanities course that studies history through diverse perspective and brings to light the lack of equity throughout, we help by shining a light on the moments of agency and power of marginalized groups rather than focusing solely on the oppression and trauma that is put upon these groups.

When I was a kid in school learning about Black history, I was taught about slavery and its horrors, Jim Crow laws and its oppression, and the civil rights movement and the violent attempts to suppress it. However, the moments that stand out to me are moments of light, power, and agency: the quilt project celebrating Black people and my piece on Josephine Baker; my sassy memorized recitation, “Harriet Tubman didn’t take no stuff, she wasn’t scared of nothing neither. Didn’t come in the world to be no slave and wasn’t gonna stay one either.” (I typed that from memory!); Honey, I Love and other poems by Eloise Greenfield; and learning of those on the Amistad who led an uprising against their captors.

This year for Black History Month at Brimmer, we celebrated Black Joy while the country looked at the theme of resistance. I believe they are one and the same. A line from Black feminist Poet Toi Derricotte has become famous: “Joy is an act of resistance.” As systems of oppression work to terrorize marginalized groups, acts of joy show that, try as they may, we will not be kept down.

We are in a renaissance of publishing right now. It used to be hard to find books representing a historically marginalized group without the protagonist’s identity being a problem. A West African proverb says, “The lion’s story will never be known as long as the hunter is the one to tell it.” Now increasingly publishers and related imprints are producing books written by people of color that celebrate the richness and diversity within a community. Kwame Alexander, Black poet and writer of The Crossover fame, started an imprint called Versify. According to HarperCollins, “Versify publishes books that explore the beauty, hurdles, and hopefulness of life... books that will engage, entertain, and empower young people to imagine and create a better world.” Established in 2018, Versify immediately started publishing awardwinning books such as The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander and Kadir Nelson, Anya and the Nightingale by Sofiya Pasternack, and Vamos: Let’s Go to the Market by Raúl the Third (a past Bissell Grogan Symposium speaker).

Cynthia Leitich Smith, a Muscogee authorcurator, started Heartdrum, an imprint centering Native and First Nations stories, authors, and illustrators for kids and teens. According to their site, “Heartdrum offers a wide range of innovative, unexpected, and heartfelt stories by Native creators, informed and inspired by lived experience, with an emphasis on the present and future of Indian Country and on the strength of young Native heroes.”

Versify and Heartdrum are just two examples of the changes taking place in the publishing industry that bring balance and joy to stories that once focused solely on oppression.

It’s important to acknowledge that curriculum is more than just materials. Curriculum is also how teachers engage with students in their classes and the atmosphere that they create in the classroom. This is why I aim to make the library a welcoming space where people can get what they need; a quiet, productive space to get work done or access to resources to help with their work, be it books, textbooks, math lab, a writing center, a learning center, or time with tutors. To provide moments of lightness and joy I offer quiet games to play and puzzles. We celebrate heritage months and cultural holidays with displays of books, visual materials, and activities, and we offer opportunities for community members to share what brings them joy about their culture or their celebrations. These have become meaningful examples of balance and joy in the library and in my work.

Being a librarian brings me so much joy. I find joy knowing that Brimmer is a place that honors kindness, respect, and equity, and that our students can enjoy books that are simultaneously being removed from the shelves of schools around this state and the country.

While I hold tightly to the joy in my work, I hold space for balance, too. There is a Ghanaian concept called Sankofa, which has been invoked in equity throughout our country. Sankofa is the idea that to move forward you must also be able to look back and receive from the past. If we only celebrate joy, people may not understand the historical context of why it is necessary to spotlight certain groups. As educators, we know that heavy topics weigh more, and the joyful ones are lighter. In order to provide our students with the most equitable educational experience possible, we must honor both. ■

Black History Month display on the windows of the Library Learning Commons.