I was seven years old when my abuela took me to the library to get my first card. Every week after, I returned to visit new worlds that were beyond my imagination. Transported from my working-class neighborhood to other countries, lives and possibilities. I learned that the power of reading and knowledge. As a teenager, I was lost among the stacks one day and I began searching for books that represented my experience as a young Puerto Rican girl without even a dictionary in my house. Desiring to enter the library and see an abundance of books by authors with Spanish names I was inspired to write. I loved Judy Blume, but didn't understand what it meant to own an Angora sweater or a two story home. My world spoke more than one language, rode public transportation, diverse sexualities, had one parent and was multicultural.
Today, you can go to the library and there are more books on the shelves by multicultural authors then there were twenty years ago. But, public libraries still need funding to provide a free service to the community. Support your local library, so the next Judy Blume, Esmeralda Santiago or Toni Morrison will be able to follow her dream and transport young people for years to come to places both familiar and foreign. Beyond even reading or becoming the next Junot Diaz, Richard Price or Langston Hughes--libraries are a free resource where we can learn about anything!
They impacted my life. How much do they mean to you?
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