Black History Month 2020

This extra day in February this leap year of 2020 has given me the chance to reflect and document some of the ways I have celebrated Black History Month. As a librarian, I have the authority, capacity, position and responsibility to make access to a broad collection of materials available to a wide base of users. I do not take my stewardship lightly. As a member of the Black diaspora, there are so many beautiful cultural products I want to celebrate and here I share some of my engagements from this month alone with you. How do you celebrate Black History Month? Share with me in the comments.

• Began reading Ser mujer negra en España (Being A Black Woman in Spain) by Desirée Bela-Lobedde and invited the author as a virtual guest to be interviewed by a class on campus
• Hosted the annual competitive trivia event Black History Month Jeopardy 3.0, making sure prizes included a broad diaspora of writers, including Haitian author Edwidge Danticat's ​Everything Inside and Nigerian American Teju Cole's Everyday is For the Thief.  See more at bit.ly/bhmjeopardy.
• Promoted Kehinde Wiley’s art, whose original work will now form part of our museum's collection!
• Chose bell hooks’ All About Love: New Visions as future reading material after winning it in a raffle
• Advised the Black Student Union on programming for its annual Faculty/Staff panel and its annual Night of Black Culture
• Published go.middlebury.edu/1619faq which informs library users of how to access Nikole Hannah-Jones’ "1619 Project" and put her work on display
• Requested a variety of library materials for acquisition in print, audiobook, compact disc and DVD format
  • Album II by Kem
  • The Book of Negroes by Canadian Lawrence Hill
  • The Book of Night Women by Jamaican Marlon James
  • Case Study 01 and Freudian by Canadian Daniel Caesar
  • Charcoal Boys by Brazilians Roger Mello and Daniel Hahn
  • Conversations in Black: On Power, Politics, and Leadership by Ed Gordon
  • Cuentos Crudos by Equatorial Guinean Juan Tomás Avila Laurel
  • The Greatest Hits by Debarge
  • H.E.R. by H.E.R.
  • I’m Telling the Truth But I’m Lying by Nigerian American Bassey Ikpi
  • Le triangle et l’hexagone by French professor Dr. Maboula Soumahoro 
  • Red Velvet and W.A.J.E. by Nigerian singer Waje
  • Shea Butter Baby by Ari Lennox
  • Twenty Africans: Their Story, and Discovery of Their Black, Red, & White Descendants by Stephen Hanks
  • Tyrese by Tyrese 
  • Waves by Trey Edward Shults
  • Woman of the Ashes by white Mozambican writer Mia Cuoto
• Authored and shared reviews of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Dinaw Mengestu’s How to Read the Air
• Checked out Natives in translation by Spanish-language, Cameroonian writer Inongo vi-Makomè
• Identified a black librarian to mentor another black librarian based on their similar specializations/interests.
• Applied to attend the Seminar for the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM) 
• Listened to my friends and family and made space for new people in my life

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