First, wyd
Since i. El Prefacio/The Preface, it’s become summer (embodied in the picture above), I started a new job, and I’ve been logging out, putting up away messages, turning off notifications, laughing only when things are funny, and overall prioritizing my mental health and wellbeing over productivity. I’m also grieving my career change and thinking about folks I care a lot about who have to go back to work in-person in libraries when they truly do not want to be or feel unsafe.
Grieving doesn’t mean I’m unhappy with my decision. Until very recently, I wouldn’t have even used the word “grieving” as I saw it as tied to death, loss, and feelings I’m uncomfortable having or sharing publicly. But after reading Malkia Devich-Cyril’s chapter, “To Give Your Hands to Freedom, First Give Them To Grief,” in “Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation,” by adrienne maree brown, I have a more well-rounded understanding of grief. As they write, “Grief also includes great joy and gratitude.” I have a lot of gratitude as I explore being an information professional who doesn’t work in a library. I can do work that benefits the profession from this position. What will I do with this opportunity.
Firelei Báez
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I’m still thinking about the virtual event Cigüapa Unbound: Blackness, Gender and Transnational Geographies of Marronage, hosted by The Latinx Project at New York University. At this event I was introduced to artist Firelei Báez (b. 1981, Dominican Republic). The event was centered around La Cigüapa — “a mythological creature of Dominican folklore. They are commonly described as having human female form with brown or dark blue skin, backward facing feet, and very long manes of smooth, glossy hair that covers their bodies.”
The event included a “collective dialogue of the critical fabulations of La Cigüapa’s story and the ways it allows them to grapple with the erasure of Blackness, through indigenista mestizaje in the Dominican context as well as the transnational geographies she inhabits.”
Seeing Firelei Báez’s work did something to me. I attended the event at the very end of being an art librarian, so I checked my library’s catalog and was surprised to see we had a book of Firelei’s work: Bloodlines from Pérez Art Museum Miami. Now out of print and going for over $700 in the few places I’ve seen it available for resale, I let a couple other librarians know how important this publication is. After all, how many retrospective-type books on contemporary Latine artists do we have in the collection? How many even exist? If it were lost, would we replace it?
In my introductory instruction sessions with students, I would talk about the disparities in the publishing industry as a way for them to think about books they see on the shelves — any shelf — whether it be in a library, bookstore, etc. Why are the vast majority of books about a single artist typically white and those who aren’t are lumped into a book by continent or other geographical area? In what ways is this tied to capitalism and the art market and structural racism?
I would also tell them everything you see in a library is based on decisions made by a person or persons, who all have implicit and explicit biases. Everything from where you see something on a shelf to what you see digitized online.
I checked out Firelei Báez’s book and returned it my last day.
Nos vemos. Gracias, paz, salud.
jennifer
Wow, I love looking at grief this way - as a path to freedom. I'll have to check out that chapter. Thank you Jenny!