The first one I went to was the large, iconic Harold Washington Chicago Public Library. It's located smack downtown, about a block from ACM HQ. It's a majestic building made of huge stone and large arched doorways. Very different from the symmetrical, rectangle, metal buildings around it.
Here's a pic to prove it.
This was my first time getting a book from this library. I only went there once, briefly, to get my library card. This time, I got to look around. I took escalators up to the 7th floor, where the book that I was looking for --The House on Mango Street-- was located. There was so much open space, so many long wood tables dotted with readers, such tall and wide bookcases. Everything here is big and grand. And when it's a library, there's nothing wrong with big and grand.
I left with two books. The House on Mango Street was for a seminar presentation, but I couldn't resist checking out Caramelo, also by Sandra Cisneros. It looks good, I'll let you know when I'm done whether or not I recommend it. I'm sure I will.
On Wednesday, I went to the Legler branch of the Chicago Public Library. This is located in West Garfield Park/Cicero area. I took the green line far West. I was the only white person there, and the buildings looked like this.
This trip reminded me of why I decided to do the Chicago Program. Not to see big fancy high-end libraries in the downtown. But because you don't have to go halfway around the world to be immersed in a different culture. Instead, you just have to decide to walk in the opposite direction of your usual route, go to the places you've never been. I felt like I was in another country.
The library in West Garfield Park was more beautiful than the Harold Washington. Maybe not physically, but what it was trying to do there was on a whole other level. I made a beeline for the library the second I got off the train. People stared at me. I stared at the sidewalk. The houses and storefronts I passed had peeled paint, flyers, and cracked windows with broken bottles lying at their entrance. The library is this massive, stone thing that looks nothing like it's surroundings.
The second I got in, I breathed a sigh of relief. I was instantly relaxed by it's quiet, unassuming warmth. Floating above the circulation desk in the atrium is a carving of two figures, a mother and a child, hanging horizontal with one arm outstretched, holding hands, demonstrating security, support, family. I think the link between mother and child is the strongest bond two people could possibly have in the whole world.
For my seminar, I had to take a selfie of me w/ the sculpture, to prove I'd visited the public art site. Pretty sure the circulation woman thought I was weird. She was nice enough to keep it to herself though, if she did.
The rooms off of the atrium were cozy and there were a fair amount of people, kids and adults, reading there. If I had to sum it all up in one word: tranquility.
I saw several stands with pamphlets advertising the library's adult literacy, childcare, tutoring, and reading programing, all free for the public. I realized that this library has probably saved kids lives, altering a potentially dangerous trajectory, offering them books in exchange for the activities occurring on the streets just off the library's stoop.
When I first entered the library, I saw the women working the circulation desk as librarians, employees of the city. Now I think of them as social workers.
Legler library, where hope has a home.
Sometimes I feel aimless and hopeless, like there are sooo many problems in the world but they're out of my control, beyond my reach, too complicated and layered in corruption for me to do anything about them. But my visit to West Garfield Park was tangible evidence of a place where the societal problems are not abstract and the solutions aren't obfuscated. This is real. I want to go back.
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