Every day on campus artists and entrepreneurs study in the same classrooms, activists and researchers climb the same stairs, and poets and scientists share laughs over meals. Being in close proximity with each other fosters the intellectual and personal growth that changes lives. But too often we miss these vital connections. The aim of the Human Library Initiative is to remedy that. The first Hum
an Library dates back to the spring of 2000. The place - Cophenhagen, Denmark. The goal - to challenge stereotypes and prejudices by bringing people together to talk, share, and listen.
The Human Library works much like a regular library in which you can browse for books by topic, only the “books” are people, the “topics” are their life experiences, and the “reading” is a conversation. For example, you could walk into the library and check out various categories of interest to you such as “homeless”, “Native American”, “athlete”, “disabled”, “transgender”, or “Muslim” and learn more about that person, their life and the challenges and stereotypes that they've overcame and faced. Readers are encouraged to ask questions, seek advice, consider other outlooks on life, and empathize on a human level. The conversations have no predetermined structure and unfold organically, so that no book reads the exact same way twice. Anyone who wishes to participate in the program can be a reader, a book, or both.
It is one thing to read about a culture, an issue, or an event, but books are limited in what they can do. No book can look you in the eye and tell you what it was like to grow up in poverty and then make it to a place like Swarthmore. No book can shake your hand and describe what it felt when it became the first in its family to graduate from high school. No book can shed tears as it reminisces about a loved one, or laugh as it recounts the first time it saw snow. No book can compare to a human being. We all have stories like these written inside of us. It’s time we read them out loud.
