What is a Book: A Reflection (or The Birth of My First Teaching Zine)

My first teaching zine was born at 3 a.m. on May 25, 2024. I didn’t know it would be the first, but I am glad it is–it makes perfect sense. I have spent months ruminating on how to express what I believe to be critical in these perilous times, but I had to work at it, carve it out, mold it, shape it with all of my heart and mind. I have been watching it slowly reveal itself to me.

If you are interested in using it for teaching purposes, let me know. Copyright is a thing. I am working on a version that shall not be concerned with copyright…….and yet conveys (hopefully) the same message.

My hope is that it underscores what we often think we know, but do not truly live out—that books are not simply fantastic items that we buy, keep, collect, hoard, give away, sell, resell, display, shelve; they are so so so much more, and it is this “so much more” that makes them so very desirable, so very vulnerable, so very enduring, and so very feared:

They are critical pollinators…often in peril. Books are human voices that must speak and must be heard. Maybe it sounds elemental–well, it is. I believe that it is not enough to fight for the freedom of books unless we truly realize the profound humanity of books.

I concur with Cummings’ read of Milton, in his early recognition that “a book possesses ‘a life beyond a life’” and therefore “destroying a book…is like an act of homicide (Cummings, 2013). And yet, what we must be careful to never hallow the book over the creator, they are indivisible.

Currently, the rush is to ban (read: silence) LGBTQ+ and BIPOC books (read: voices). If allowed to continue, the oppressors will move beyond the frontlines and seek to take more ground. If we fail to realize, and truly internalize the inherent conflation of book and creator, we will find that we have (we have already, many times over) grievously aided and abetted the oppressor in the horrific silencing of a human (or many humans)—— which must not, should never be disambiguated from their voice.

I can’t wait to share it with you. What is a Book: A Reflection is dedicated to the Quatrefoil Library and the Internet Archive. I wouldn’t have been able to make this without these two glorious, critical resources.

Suarez, M. F., Woudhuysen, H. R., & Oxford University Press. (2013). The book : a global history. Oxford University Press.