Library Research Notes #47
Library Research Notes #47
History and the Future
Library Research Notes is a product of hippiegrrl media. At hippiegrrl media we believe that Black Lives Matter, Climate Change is real, Treaties should be honored, People with uteruses have autonomy, Love is love, No human is illegal, Science=Truth, Unions are essential, the United States needs gun reform immediately, and the time for Trans Liberation is now! We value your readership. If you enjoy the Library Research Notes newsletter, please share it with a friend.
Welcome and Thank You for Reading
Wow - January flew by and I only got 2 chapters into the first book of my TBR. I did finish a book that I started at the end of 2023 (Wilder Girls), so that is an accomplishment. 1 down, however many I can read to go.
I have a few things I want to focus on this time in the newsletter and I promise to try and keep up the schedule going forward. I’m not sure what direction we are going to take this year, but I will try my best to keep updating every other week.
Thank you for reading and sticking with me on this year of intention. I hope you are doing well and that you enjoy this issue. And please, as always, if you have comments, questions, or suggestions for future writing, please leave me a message and we will discuss!
February is Black History Month
We should be learning about Black history every month, as part of American history, but as you know there are always forces of white supremacy and racism pushing back on any history taught in schools that is not the whitewashed, colonialist version of the American story. The push to remove “CRT” and ban books from schools further demonstrates this trend. Having said that, I want to introduce a few really great resources for Black history that I have come across in my research and discuss some of the legislation that is being touted in the states.
The 1619 Project Docuseries - if you have Hulu, you have probably already seen the ad for this docuseries and the link above will take you to the viewing guide, compiled by Donnalie Jamnah and Kendra Grissom, of the Pulitzer Center. This guide is meant for teachers to use with their classes, but it is helpful for anyone that wishes to get a deeper understanding of the series and think more critically about the topics presented. Questions to consider, before, during, and after watching each episode are included.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) resources for Black History Month - This page offers links to several lesson plans that can be implemented in classrooms across grade levels that teach on both historical issues and current-day issues such as hair discrimination (What is the CROWN Act?), bias (When Perception and Reality Collide: Implicit Bias and Race), and voter suppression (Voting Rights Then and Now). They also include links to books that can be used in and out of the classroom to gain additional knowledge.
The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) has many resources on its site including the Black History Month Festival Virtual Experience. A listing of all festival events is located here and I am particularly looking forward to the panel discussion, Resistance and the Black Press, and wish I could attend Odell Ruffin’s Campaign ‘72, a play based on the life of Shirley Chisolm, which will be on stage in Washington DC. ASALH determines the theme of each Black History Month and this year that theme is “Black Resistance”. Click around on the site for some really great information!
The ASALH was also the entity that developed, in collaboration with the College Board, the Advanced Placement (AP) course in African American Studies that was rejected by the Florida Department of Education after Governor Ron Desantis denounced the course. A full statement from ASALH on this rejection is here.
The beginning of the statement reads:
“The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) strongly condemns the actions of Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) to deprive students of accurate knowledge about the African American experience. ASALH believes that DeSantis, the FDOE, and white supremacist forces in dozens of other states are attempting to censure Black historical knowledge in public school curricula. We also condemn the College Board’s revisions which conform to the talking points DeSantis and white supremacists have argued since 2019.”
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor also writes for the New Yorker on The Meaning of African American Studies and the College Boards’ decision to gut the AP course.
Booklists
15 Books to Read During Black History Month and Beyond (innocenceproject.org)
Must Read Books For Black History Month (shondaland.com)
NEA Black History Month Booklist (worldcat.org)
Gen X Trauma and Space Travel
January 28, 1986: I was 11 years old and in 6th grade. This day was special because it was a space shuttle launch day unlike any other. The first non-astronaut, who was also a teacher (!), Christa McAuliffe, was aboard. We had done projects and written letters to the astronauts, leading up to the launch, and we were all extremely excited to watch the launch live on television in our classroom. 73 seconds into the launch, an explosion occurred and pieces of the shuttle fell to the ground. Although our teacher didn’t say it, we knew it wasn’t normal and that, possibly, the teacher onboard, along with the astronauts, had died.
In 1986, school children from 1st grade to 12th grade, who did not yet have a generational moniker, like the boomers, would soon be referred to as Generation X. Although the name was appropriate for many reasons, it came from the title of a book written by Douglas Coupland, who had his finger on the pulse of American teen and twenty-something life in the 80s and 90s. Save for a lack of diversity amongst the characters, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture is a good representation of privileged young adults who are depressed and bored with their lives. Although we had yet to see the full scope of this new generation when the book was published in 1991, Coupland was definitely on to something.
The official span of years for Gen X varies according to different think tanks and agencies, but for our purposes here I am going to go with the United States Social Security Administration span of 1964-1979 (wikipedia.org). If we use this as a reference, in 1986, people born in the Gen X years were turning 7-22 years old. This puts us squarely within school age, from grammar school through college.
The Event
On that day in 1986, people aged 7-22 collectively watched a horrific event occur on television, in classrooms, and in student unions across the country, and had nowhere to put the trauma that was felt in the moment. 1986 was a time in America when we were still pre-mass school shootings. There were bad things that happened, of course, but they had yet to happen on a grand scale in a school setting. I say this to note that although we had guidance counselours in schools, we had yet to receive counseling after any major event. The boomers lived through a similar traumatic event with no support, but they didn’t SEE it on television. When JFK was assassinated, it was announced on the loudspeaker and the kids were sent home. Later, they heard from newscasters that the President had died. At that point, they were home with parents, guardians, or other adults who could talk through the tragedy with them. This was not the case in 1986.
This isn’t to say that we had no support, we certainly did, and I am certain that the adults in our lives helped us navigate the trauma once we were home, but at that moment, with our teachers who were also in shock, there was no immediate response. No guidance. No grief counseling. The televisions were just switched off and we were told to continue with the day. Continue reading, writing, learning. I am sure that our teachers thought consistency would be the best way to deal with this tragedy, but my theory is that this event was the catalyst for our angst. It was the day that we all, collectively as a generation, realized that everything wasn’t good in the world. That even something as exciting as a space shuttle launch that we were all hyped up for could end in such a horrific way.
Could this have been the reason that Generation X became disillusioned with the world? Why many of us turned inward? Why the music became more dark and more depressing? Perhaps. While researching this piece, I found an interesting blog post that agrees with this theory. The writer notes:
“Ten miles above the earth there was a structural failure that took seven lives, and meanwhile, on earth, there was a structural failure in how a generation was being raised. Generation X wasn't just the latchkey children of broken homes, we were the latchkey children of a broken society.”
There was one person, though, who did try to help us cope, using the same medium that delivered the horrific news of the challenger explosion. Mr. Rogers. This past weekend, we finally got a chance to watch the Won’t You Be My Neighbor? documentary on Netflix and it was extremely moving. In one montage, near the end, they talk about the challenger and show clips from Mr. Rogers’ show during this time. He was such a loving and caring individual, who genuinely believed that children had the same internal, emotional life as adults. He spoke plainly to us and helped us through difficult times in our lives and the challenger explosion was one of those times.
I’m not sure if I actually saw the episode, as a child, but I know that watching other episodes of his show helped mold me into the empathetic person that I am today. I believe that he helped our whole Generation (X) to see the humanity in one another and although many of us have lost that empathy over the years, many more of us retained it and use it in our daily lives to try and make the world a better place.
Generation X has lived through many difficult times, and we have expressed our emotions through music and art (think grunge and goth) but we have also been able to survive those times and come out stronger for it. If more of us could get into therapy to work through the remaining PTSD from these major life events, I think we could come out on the other side even stronger. Wise and resilient and ready to be good neighbours.
Good news from the stacks
You made it! Here are your library links…