Introduction: Extraordinary service, extraordinary love
By Scott Shoger
The International Board on Books for Young People’s “Call-to-Action for
Refugee Children” has me thinking of how, to borrow from Elvis
Costello, history repeats the old conceits. I spoke with three IBBY
reps behind that call-to-action – which calls for renewed efforts to
help children in crisis – during the heart of the U.S. presidential
campaign. [1] The results are published as one of the four special
features that make up this issue of World
Libraries, the first under my editorship.
Bedraggled followers of that campaign will remember one of Republican
nominee Donald Trump’s favored symbols: the “great Trojan horse,”
filled with “tens of thousands” of Syrian refugees, parked outside the
gate of Fortress America, ready to roll in under the permissive watch
of Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton – no Cassandra, her. [2] And if
Clinton gamely rejoined Trump’s conspiratorial ravings with a more
level-headed, if not exactly full-throated, endorsements of refugee
resettlement – “I am not going to slam the door on women and children,”
she put it during the third debate –the nativism embodied and
emboldened by Trump won’t be so easily put to rest. And Trump’s not the
only one playing that same tired old tune, night after night, rally after
rally. [3]
Look to UK columnist Katie Hopkins, who described migrants as
“cockroaches” capable of surviving a nuclear bomb in The Sun. [4] Or Dutch politician
Geert Wilders, who predicts a “Muslim invasion” that will leave “young
men with beards singing ‘Allahu Akbar’ across Europe.” [5]
And let us
not forget The Wall, or rather, Walls: from the one Trump says
Mexico will pay for on the border with U.S., to the Great Wall of
Calais, which the U.K. is actually paying for on behalf of France, to
all other barriers turning back those in search of refuge and respite.
There’s nothing new about such bigotry – Trump seems to be summoning up
these primeval archetypes from our collective unconscious, stirring up
Nietzsche’s ressentiment, that “whole tremulous realm of subterranean
revenge, inexhaustible and insatiable in outbursts.” [6] But the
mainstreaming of such discourse – juxtaposed against scenes of
unspeakable tragedy from Lampedusa to Aleppo – is extraordinarily
concerning. And it’s incumbent on those fighting the good fight for
social justice across the information spectrum to respond to these
extraordinary threats with extraordinary advocacy, extraordinary
service, extraordinary love.
This issue of World Libraries features a few of those extraordinary
responses, essayed by extraordinary people. We hear from Jane Yolen,
the “Hans Christian Andersen of America and the Aesop of the twentieth
century,” whose 2014 Butler Lecture, published for the first time here,
eschews the simplistic formulation of “fakelore” in exploring how
stories migrate and mutate across centuries and cultures. And Marianna
Tax Choldin, aka Madame Censorship, aka the founding director of the
Mortenson Center for International Library Programs, discusses her new
memoir on Russian and Soviet censorship, advocating for not only free
speech but also its flipside: active listening.
We also receive dispatches from Cate Carlyle and her International
Librarians Network cohorts, dedicated to a peer mentorship model that
scraps hierarchy and values the contributions of librarians of any age,
from anywhere. And four IFLA veterans emphasize that much work remains
to be done on the Treaty of Marrakesh to make it truly work on behalf
of visually impaired patrons. Thanks for your precious time and
brainwaves, and please direct any and all comments, contributions and
criticism to sshoger@dom.edu and/or the authors themselves.
Endnotes
[1] "IBBY's Call-to-Action," International Board on Books for Young
People," August 21, 2016,
http://www.ibby.org/fileadmin/user_upload/IBBY%E2%80%99S_CALL__Auckland_2016.pdf.
↵
[2] Chance Seales, “Trump: Obama welcoming pro-ISIS refugees could be
‘all-time great Trojan horse,'” WNCN.com, June 13, 2016, http://wncn.com/2016/06/13/trump-obama-welcoming-pro-isis-refugees-could-be-all-time-great-trojan-horse/.
↵
[3] Alexander Burns and Matt Flegenheimer, “Presidential Debate: What
You Missed,” The New York Times, October 19, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/us/politics/presidential-debate.html?_r=0.
↵
[4] Katie Hopkins, “Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants,”
The Sun, April 17, 2015, https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1541491/rescue-boats-id-use-gunships-to-stop-migrants/.
↵
[5] Yoruk Bahceli, “Wilders tells Dutch parliament refugee crisis is
‘Islamic invasion,’” Reuters, September 10, 2015, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-netherlands-idUSKCN0RA0WY20150910.
↵
[6] Friedrich Neitzsche, On the
Geneaology of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York:
Vintage, 1989), 124. ↵