Posted on 06/24/2008 9:39:47 AM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
A new kind of Library has opened, where instead of books you can borrow a Muslim - or a single father, or a transvestite, for a chat. Alex Forsyth volunteers to be lent as a ‘book’, and asks whether this concept can really help break down stereotypes.
A Muslim, a Catholic and a transsexual are sitting in a library. An opener to a joke this is not: It is the Living Library – where, instead of books, you borrow people. You pick a person for a 30-minute dialogue in which you can ask questions, engage in meaningful discourse or simply bounce ideas. I wait with the other ‘books’ to be borrowed.
At the front desk there is a catalogue listing the selection of human books on offer, under each book title there are a handful of negative epithets. The stereotypes range from ‘funeral director’ (adjectives include ‘morbid’ and ‘exploitative’) to ‘Indian atheist’ (‘eccentric’, ‘nonconformist’). As a prerequisite to interviewing the candidates, I had agreed to volunteer to join the Living Library as one of the books; the ‘student’. In the catalogue at the Human Library’s front desk, ‘Student’ was bundled with a healthy handful of clichés: Aside from ‘tax-dodger’, ‘do useless degrees’ and ‘politically apathetic’ I was also down for ‘lazy’, ‘can’t cook’ and ‘spends all money on beer.’
Sitting and chatting with the other books proved a little awkward at first, and there was a whiff of dark comedy in the air. Being asked ‘What book are you?’ and being expected to ask it back prompted surge of panic: If I didn’t ask it would seem like I presumed to already know their title, thus presenting myself as someone prone to racial profiling or shallow judgements, while asking those with obvious outward signs of their title just seemed patronising.
(Excerpt) Read more at nouse.co.uk ...
How queer...
Do you get a refund if they blow up?
This is great! Let me get my .38 so I can “chat” with a pedophile!
Honk if you’re sick of hearing about Muslims, gays, and global warming.
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!
HOOONK! BEEEEEP! OOOOOHGA!
I guess this means they don't have a Democrat "book".
Please reserve Osama Bin Laden for me for next Saturday. Oh, he may be returned slightly more dead.
I’d like to borrow a quiet librarian who looks bookish but is incredibly gorgeous when she takes off her glasses and lets down her hair...
“I want to be taller.” < /seinfeld >
What are the charges for an overdue return?
you don’t have to go very far to find one those “stereotypes” and strike up a conversation. what’s the fun in that? how much would you really learn? these are the kinds of people i’d REALLY like to borrow:
a calivinist
a trotskyite (what is a trotskyite, really?)
a jainist
the fit, 50s something homeless guy with a seabag i saw once at swami’s
the mother of a female infant in india killed by her father
an astronaut
catherine the great
joan of arc
a romanian gypsy
an australian aborigine
etc.
That would be a Library of Congress.
For the Muslim, it's one finger a day.
I want to know where the library is where you can check out a supermodel.
Better watch those late fees!
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