The University of Arkansas has its Human Library catalog online<\/a> where you can see more examples. Some that caught my eye are “Come, Learn Braille” and “10 Reasons to See Ukraine.” <\/p>\n And if a book could come to life and have an interactive conversation with you, what then? It’s known that real-life contact with someone from a marginalized demographic can change world views and overturn prejudices. Contact with the stranger makes them less strange. Contact with the unknown can also reveal your own previously unknown prejudices. <\/p>\n I expect that reading a human Book is a powerful experience, and the context in which it is framed is brilliant. If you are not already a member of a particular group, you might hesitate to strike up conversation with a Muslim or Jew or Christian or street sweeper or circusmaster or gay parent or grocery bagger — how would that begin? But we are already comfortable with brushing up against Books with very divergent ideas in a Library, where anyone is free to check out anything. And these Books are there because they want to engage in conversation; you need not fear that you are being invasive. Your questions are welcomed.<\/p>\n The Santa Monica public library hosted Human Library events in 2008 and 2009, and Loyola Marymount University had an event in 2012<\/a>. I’ll have to keep my eyes out for other Human Library events so I can try one out in person!<\/p>\n What if books were people? Or people were books? The Human Library is an organization that organizes and inspires events in which participants can “check out” a human Book for a conversation. The Books are people who volunteer to express roles that are often the subject of negative prejudice, like The Police Officer, The Male […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[64],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3586"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3586"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3590,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3586\/revisions\/3590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/gulliverturtle.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/09\/humlib.jpg?w=217&h=300\")
<\/a>I love this idea. I remember the first time that I realized that a written book could have the power to give me experiences that I would never have in my own life. This happened in middle school, while reading Orson Scott Card’s “Xenocide,” which features a main character who has an obsessive-compulsive disorder. This was something I knew vaguely about, but reading Xenocide put me so far into Han Qing-jao’s head that I felt her emotional ups and downs and the pangs of her compulsions. (The fact that these are interpreted as religious imperatives, in the book, made it all the more poignant.)<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/artthreat.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/humanlibrary-600x375.jpg\")
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