lower east side librarian

Johanna, one of my favorite zine publishers, hadn't made a zine since issue 4 of Sisu came out in May 2006. For some reason, although I acquired No History, No Self from StrangerDanger back in November, I didn't get around to reading it until just now. (I have a serious cataloging backlog problem, which I hope to clear up by the end of the year!) I'm a fool for letting it go so long, but at least I finally read it. Like all of Johanna's zines, NHNS has strong political content, particularly regarding race, mixed race identity, and identity politics. She has put in her time as an activist and has plenty of cred in that arena (also in feminist science-fiction and vegan communities), so what is particularly affecting to me in this new zines venture is how personal and open she is, about missing New York, trying to make friends, being depressed and contemplating therapy. She lists some great self-care suggestions for dealing with depression, the top three being sleep, cats, and tea, things I can totally get behind. That emphasis on self-care I think in this case extends to the rest of the world. NHNS is gentler than its predecessors. Johanna, who doesn't suffer fools lightly, is more inwardly focused this time around, maybe because repatriated to the UK she's missing her friends from home around whom she can actually be herself. Reading this zine I wanted to give Johanna a hug. I also want to know when issue 2 will be out.

The second in librarian Barbara Fister's Anni Kosinken mystery series, Through the Cracks makes me sad. Sad because it's so good, that I think Barbara could ditch librarianship and be a full-time writer. She's a really good librarian, so it would be a serious loss to the profession.

Per Mrs. Robinson (all titles are listed, which jarred me at first until I realized why that would have been a big deal), Rosa Parks was actually just tired that day. I mean, she was part of it and all, but the boycott wasn't planned until after her arrest. The "Women Who Started It" were the three hundred members of Montgomery's three Women's Political Council chapters. Unfortunately the book is really more about the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and Dr. King, than the women in the title.

I'm wary of wildly popular Oprah-ish books, admittedly not because I'm afraid they'll be bad, but because I'm afraid they'll be good. It would be bad for my literary cred if I embraced every manipulative mass appeal tearjerker that came along! As it turns out, The Help is worthy of adulation. It's a brave book, written by a white author about the black servant/white employer relationship in 1960s Mississippi.

"I was scared, a lot of the time, that I was crossing a terrible line, writing in the voice of a black person. I was afraid I would fail to describe a relationship that was so intensely influential in my life, so loving, so grossly stereotyped in American history and literature." p.450

I borrowed this book from Columbia's Butler Library, which like Barnard's library and unlike NYPL, still stamps the due date in the book, so you can tell how many people have checked it out before you. I miss that, NYPL! The earliest stamp is Nov 15 1989, and as best as I can tell it's been checked out about 15 times, though I have no way of telling how many times it was renewed. In an academic library with semester long borrowing periods, there's a good chance someone hoarded it for a year or two. I did that with Comics Librarianship: a Handbook for like three years in the early days of the Barnard Library Zine Collection. But getting back to the book at hand (sorry!), how did I not join the Lynda Barry cult sooner?