Where Dialogue Meets Diversity

Written by: Sophia da Silva 🇧🇷

Image of a pillar inside the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library (Photo Credit: The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center Website).

Talking to new people can open up unique ways of understanding the world. As they cease to be strangers, so do their experiences. That’s the premise behind The Human Library.

Under the slogan “unjudge someone,” the Human Library Organization started in Copenhagen in 2000 to offer a space for people to discuss taboo topics and dismantle their biases.

At this year’s NextNOW Fest, the University of Maryland put together its own Human Library.

“It’s funny; I guess we’ve been doing human libraries for so long. It always seems like there’s a new–it always seems like it’s the perfect thing to do at the time,” said Head of the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library and Music Librarian Stephen Henry.

The event took place in the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library, where titles included “Deaf and Proud,” “UMD Cop,” "Resilient Immigrant,” and more. Once they picked a title, guests were ushered to cubicles where they met their “books.”

As you can imagine, the “books” in question were real people telling their real stories. 

The books began with a blurb about their experience, but the rest was up to the “reader” to ask questions. 

Henry, in addition to Performing Arts Librarian Drew Barker, directed the event with the help of Program Director Jane Hirshberg and Director of the Michelle Smith Collaboratory for Visual Culture  Quint Gregory.   

“With our powers combined, we need to seek out people who we think might be good books,” said Barker.

The four rely on their own personal networks to curate a library of people who are good representatives for their community and that others will find interesting. While there are some mainstays to the collection, they try to vary it to reflect what’s currently going on in the world.

One newcomer  told stories as “Fired USAID”: a conversation about someone who was working for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) when the agency was dissolved earlier this year. 

Because of the number of government workers in the DMV, this area was particularly affected by cuts from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

While many may have heard of what happened, few may have had the opportunity to talk to someone who dealt with it firsthand. Barker shared that the Human Library allows for the space to have that kind of conversation.

“People always say, ‘that was really cool, and I didn’t expect to have such a cool conversation.’ The books themselves say it and the readers say it,” Barker said.

Beck Simmons was one of the repeat books this year, speaking as “Black Dead Head.” This was Simmons’ second time participating in the Human Library, originally joining because of Hirshberg, whom he’s known closely for years.

Simmons was used to sharing his stories with friends like Hirshberg and her husband, but being part of the Human Library was the first time he talked it out to new faces.

“I don’t think I really had a desire to publicly tell my stories before,” Simmons said.

The experience has encouraged him to write a book about his life as one of the few people of color following the Grateful Dead on tour in the ‘80s. He’s still in the outline process, but talking to people at the Human Library has helped him figure out what works and what doesn’t.