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On Children’s Literature and Politics: A conversation in two voices about Hands Around the Library Karen Leggett Abouraya and Susan L. Roth
Susan: For all my years I had dreamed of going to Egypt to see the pyramids. Four and a half years ago my family and I finally arranged to do this. But our grand plan was so discouraged by so many, even including our travel agent, that we ended up deciding it would be prudent to postpone the trip. The reason? POLITICS. There were periodic violent events involving tourists in Egypt. Just before our scheduled departure a French woman was killed in the main marketplace. “Don’t take the chance”, we were begged. “You’ve waited this long, wait until it’s safer.” We canceled the trip. When it was too late to change the plans again, I told my friend Karen Leggett Abouraya (at that time not yet co-author of Hands Around the Library). Karen is married to an Egyptian and has been traveling back and forth for years with her family. She had helped me with our itinerary and was dismayed to hear that we had changed the plans. Karen “You’re going to Turkey instead?” I said to Susan, disappointed and incredulous. “That’s ridiculous! The whole world 74
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is both dangerous and safe. You have a greater chance of having an accident on the way to the airport than of having a problem in Egypt. I feel so sad for the tourist business in Egypt. It’s a major Egyptian industry, and tourist hysteria is a contagious virus and so damaging. Don’t keep waiting to go to Egypt.” Susan On the way back from a safe, interesting trip to Turkey, we stopped in France to visit a friend. In her house I noticed Egyptian posters on the walls and books about Egypt on the shelves. It turned out that our hostess had just returned from her sixth trip to Egypt. “Why aren’t you scared?” I demanded. “Didn’t you hear about that French woman in the market?” “Egypt is completely safe!” she vowed. “I am totally comfortable, the people are gentle and caring, the art and archaeology are infinitely fascinating. About that poor unlucky woman? It could have happened in New York or Paris, too.” That settled it. In December, 2009 my husband, daughter and I arrived in Cairo with an itinerary that, thanks to Karen, included Alexandria. My husband was skeptical. “Do you really want to bother leaving this incredible richness?” he asked, leaning over a case of ancient sketches for paintings on stone in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. We had already traveled to see most of the famous major sites. I think all of us would have liked to stay in that museum for at least six months. But it was too late to change the plans, and soon we were off for Alexandria and the Library that Karen had promised was as important as the pyramids. By this time I had fallen in love with Egypt and I had begun to search for an Egyptian story to write for children, brazenly confessing 75
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that what I really wanted was a legitimate excuse to return. Besides this, of course, I was fast realizing that there were wonderful stories here to share with children. We joked about my potential books as we discovered more and more things we loved about Egypt. What about a book about kosheri? (the delicious and unique street food of Egypt, made of lentils, pasta, rice, spicy tomato sauce and onions). What about greywacke? (the funny-named hardest black stone used for the most exquisite, elegant and detailed carving in my most favorite of Egyptian sculptures). Or what about the ridiculous traffic in Cairo? I was in love with ancient Egypt, yes. But I was also in love with Egypt-now. Even so, I, too, had my doubts about the Alexandria Library. After all, the original Alexandria Library was a lost wonder of the world. The new Alexandria Library was probably just a contemporary building using the famous ancient name. Everyone knows that the ancient scrolls were long gone. But when we walked inside the door and crossed over to the first balcony for the first glimpse of the extraordinary, dazzling space, I knew we had been mistaken. I stood in silence for the first five minutes, filled with thoughts about other magnificent places and grand spaces: the Grand Canyon, the Taj Mahal, the Andes, the Alps, Petra, the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, the Coliseum, everything larger than life. The Alexandria Library did not disappoint. My daughter spoke first. “Here’s your book!” she said. She was right, too. Karen Susan did not simply stand in awe at the Library. She jumped in with her whole being, visiting the Children’s Library, exchanging 76
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photos and emails with then-children’s librarian Shaimaa Saad, sharing possibilities for the future. Susan came home bursting with exclamation points. Susan I tried to call Karen right from the Library, but my cell phone would not connect. We spoke as soon as I got home. “YOU write it,” I said. “It’s only reasonable. I never even would have seen it if you hadn’t made such a fuss!” “We’ll do it together,” she said. And so we began. Karen I had always wanted to write about Egypt for young people – to let them know that there is so much more to this vast country than pyramids and mummies, fascinating as they are. I envisioned a nonfiction book with a story that would engage young readers in the mysteries of the ancient Library and intrigue them with the vast opportunities of the new Library – opportunities for the free thinking, free gathering and free questioning inherent in a democratic society. My first draft began with a small boy standing amid the market clamor and aroma of the old port, waiting to carry scrolls to the ancient Library. It ended with an exercise in civil discourse based on Skype conversations that Susan and I organized between American students in Alexandria, Virginia, and Egyptian students gathered by Shaimaa Saad at the modern Library in Alexandria, Egypt. We were playing around the edges of politics, as these youngsters moved beyond stereotypes to acknowledging their similarities. “They discovered that they wore the same jeans and 77
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T-shirts,” we would ultimately write, “they all ate pizza, liked many of the same singers, and even knew some of the same professional wrestlers.” Susan We sent word sketches to our editor and she responded to each try: too historical; too contemporary; too political; too idealistic; too dry; too capricious; too specific; too pedantic; not pedantic enough; not specific enough; too long; too short. We were very close to giving up. Karen As Susan and I debated form and audience, voice and tone, our manuscript went through many upheavals. In the midst of it all, Egypt began its own upheaval on January 25, 2011, ending 18 days later with the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak. The Arab Spring was upon us. And that too would dramatically alter our manuscript. Susan It had never occurred to either of us to write about the revolution itself. We could have imagined the editor’s responses to that: too violent; too dangerous; too unresolved; too political; too not-for-children. And besides, the revolution had nothing to do with the Alexandria Library… …until suddenly one day it seemed to have EVERYTHING to do with the Alexandria Library. My husband and I were driving, listening to the breaking news on the radio. The trouble was spreading in Egypt. Protesters were gathering in Alexandria. And then we heard, live, talk about the Library and the people who had left the march to hold hands right then, around the Library, protecting it. 78
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“Your book!” my husband said. I called Karen from the car, and the rest is “Children’s Literature and Politics.” Karen Dr. Ismail Serageldin, the Director of the Alexandria Library – officially retaking the ancient name Bibliotheca Alexandrina – waxed eloquent on the Library website and in media interviews about the youth who were leading the revolution. “This revolution in Egypt was a liberal revolution,” he said. “And I’m proud and happy that the Library of Alexandria may have contributed in some small way to supporting the kinds of ideas that have found their expression in the young people who led this revolution.” The young people holding hands around the Library seemed a perfect ending to our story. The editors thought otherwise. They moved the ancient Library to the backmatter, relegated the small boy to memory and insisted on putting the revolutionaries’ protection of the Library – politics – on center stage. The emails between editors and authors were as plentiful and intense as revolutionary Twitter posts. There had to be a balance – dramatic tension that did not swallow the facts, incipient danger that did not become random violence, a marketing dream that did not wreak havoc with the truth. Susan It was a difficult balance to reach. Fortunately for the publication, (not to mention the people and their beautiful city), unlike in Cairo, things never got completely out of hand in Alexandria. The immediacy and the changing times in Egypt was and is another political issue. The amount of time, from the moment of acceptance by 79
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the publisher to the moment of publication for any children’s picture book, is almost always more than a year. What if our book effectively were to become a period piece by the time it’s published in August, 2012? No one knows what might still happen in Egypt, though fortunately for our story, the event upon which we focus really did happen as we have told it. No matter what follows, the warm, hand-holding moment at the Alexandria Library is one that will live forever. We only hope that the political situation will settle soon, before more lives and livelihoods are threatened. Karen Our book is a true collaboration – the essence of politics at its best. We compromised on form and style, but not on facts. I adopted Susan’s lyrical style; she accepted my journalist’s insistence on not embellishing the truth. We had hoped to address religious politics more directly. Susan The picture book format (still my favorite) does have its limitations. Under the heading of ‘just the right balance’ of harsh political messages should be included ‘just the right balance’ of religious messages. Maybe all the dinner table subjects that we are taught never to mention are mostly taboo for picture books, too. One piece that we especially wanted to include was how Christians and Arabs were being so respectful of each other’s religious expressions during the initial protests. There were beautiful, true examples of diverse people being kind and helpful and decent to each other. Sadly, our mentions were mostly edited out. Of course, picture books have severe space and production constraints too, being usually 80
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no more than 32 pages, sometimes stretching to 40, so perhaps that was part of the reason for the exclusion. I think it bears reminding at this point that book publishing is, after all, a business. The first objective is to create a book that will attract attention and sell. Certainly everyone would like all books to be interesting, intelligent, excellent, beautiful, original, lovely. But if the book doesn’t sell, the publisher cannot stay in business. It is the publisher alone who has the last word on that prediction. Will it or won’t it be likely to sell? No one knows, but it’s the publisher’s dice that are rolling. Writers can either compromise or self-publish or not publish at all. And then there are the pictures. Usually when I begin to work on a book, often before the text is complete, I have an idea of how the book will look. Even though I work in collage and even though process is really part of every finished piece, most of the time my early vision dictates the direction that the art takes. But this did not happen with Hands Around the Library. Awed by the huge physical structure of the Library, at first I was certain that I would make nothing but photomontages for this book. Instead, the pictures seemed to build themselves…dominated by the leitmotifs of the marching protestors and the signs that they carried. A second theme grew out of the photographs of Egyptian art and artifacts that Karen’s daughter, Nadia Abouraya, provided. Most of these images came directly from the Abouraya home. The dominant inspiration for me was an appliquéd and quilted fabric that hangs on their wall. This is actually part of a tent like those used now in Egyptian cities, to block off parts of streets for small urban celebrations such as weddings. The bright colors and infinite design variations adapted well 81
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to my collage medium, and I felt that these ‘design quotations’ substantiated and enhanced an important point of our book. Karen The cover entailed more compromise. Susan and I wanted the background to be the magnificent granite wall of the Library, with its hundreds of unique characters from modern and historic languages. Thinking that too obscure, the publisher opted for the colors of the Egyptian flag – which does indeed make the cover dramatic and eye-catching. Susan walked a tightrope between my call (and my Egyptian husband’s) for fewer women in hijab and men in beards and the publisher’s desire to keep these images front and center as an immediate cue to buyers that ours is a ‘multicultural’ book. As a result, many Westernized Egyptians who participated in the revolution may see themselves in our text, but not on our cover. Susan And so our countdown to publication date continues. Today the Library is still safe and open, although politics remain uncertain in Egypt. Recently, Karen’s husband went to Cairo for a meeting, stopping in Alexandria to visit family and friends. While there, he managed to meet with Library Director Ismail Serageldin, one of the two featured characters in our story. Tharwat Abouraya hand carried folded and gathered sheets of Hands Around the Library, the still unbound but printed version, to give to the director. Karen and I had both been anxious about possible objections. What if he didn’t like that suit he’s wearing? (I mean the one I literally wove for him out of paper). What if he thought I made his glasses too 82
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big? What if he objected to turning such a serious event into a picture book? What if? What if? But Serageldin was totally enthusiastic and absolutely supportive – including asking his staff to help implement our suggestion for a Library-sponsored symposium on children’s literature as part of the book launch. He invited us to return to Egypt! Sadly, though, politics intervened again. Serageldin is facing his own challenges and we have been advised to postpone the symposium until a more peaceful time. Politics affect all of living, and children’s literature, too. The recent event that we chose to highlight is about contemporary politics. This book is about NOW, not about pharaonic Egypt. We are talking about yesterday, this minute and tomorrow. We are waiting and watching with the rest of the world. We make our political statements loud and clear as we join hands with all those Egyptians who wish to protect their Bibliotheca Alexandrina. And we speak through our medium, the one that we love best, children’s books. Karen The message implicit in our book is a celebration of libraries as a place to nurture those freedoms. (We shall be expanding on these themes on the book’s future website, www.handsaroundthelibrary.com.) In the eighteenth century, the American Benjamin Franklin formed a group called the Junto Society to debate politics, morals and natural philosophy. It was this group that created the first American library, among numerous other public amenities. Today, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina is reviving ancient traditions of teaching, scholarship, research and public discussion. There are countless efforts to bring literacy, books and libraries to communities around the world that are poor in resources but rich in spirit. 83
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Yet even in America, libraries are under siege – by politics. American mayors have reported that hours, staff and services at local libraries were the number two area for budget cuts, second only to services at parks and gardens. All politics are local. Children’s literature – and our children’s ability to access literature – is at stake. Hands Around the Library in Alexandria is a metaphor for every library in every village, city, state and nation that cries out for our passion and our support. Works Cited Roth, Susan and Abouraya, Karen. 2012. “Hands Around the Library” [Online] Available at: http:www.handsaroundthelibrary.com [Accessed 1 June 2012] Roth, Susan and Abouraya, Karen. Hands Around the Library: Protecting Egypt’s Treasured Books. New York: Dial, 2012. Print.
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