Launch of Growing Together Blog

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Hey hi hello! I'm Sam, the Reference and Community Engagement Librarian here at the Duxbury Free Library. Welcome to the Growing Together blog! This blog is part of the Growing Together: Equity and Allyship initiative at the Duxbury Free Library. This initiative will allow us to work together as a community to learn about equity, inclusion, and how we can work to build a better society. By engaging with intersectional resources and programs, we can educate ourselves on how to be better allies to others. For more anti-oppression resources, you can check out our curated collection of online resources, our Spotify playlist with podcasts recommendations, and our Youtube playlist with video resources.

On this blog, you'll find monthly posts about the books that I'm reading (like my own personal book reports that you can follow along with, except I don't have to stand up and give a presentation in front of the class). Every month, I’ll be reading a fiction and nonfiction book that each highlight voices and stories from historically marginalized identities.

Some notes about the books that I’ll be reading each month: These are books that we have in our collection here at the Duxbury Free Library. For the most part, I will be featuring books for adults, but teens might also find these books interesting. My goal with this "Book Breakdowns" part of the blog is to highlight books written by immigrant, POC, LGBTQ, and/or disabled authors. It's important that we reflect on our own reading practices. You can read more about the phrase "decolonize your bookshelf" here. Reading isn't by any means the only thing we should be doing when it comes to anti-racism work, but it is a start towards informing ourselves about more thoughtful and meaningful activism practices.


Hopefully, this blog will provide you with some great recommendations for your own reading list! I’ll usually be posting these "Book Breakdowns" during the last week of the month, and will hopefully develop a more concrete schedule over time. This blog is partially inspired by the Queer Fiction Blog at the Boston Public Library.


Some other content you might find on here: posts about anti-oppression programs we'll be having at the library, informative articles, updates, and more!

 

This November, I’ll be reading: 


the book cover of Black on Both Sides featuring two people posing


Nonfiction


Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton











the cover for There There, featuring an orange background and two feathers





Fiction


There There by Tommy Orange 








Want more reads from diverse authors? Join us for our Biopic Book Club, where every other month we read a biography (about women, POC, and/or LGBTQ folks) and watch the movie based on their life. Join us on our first meeting on Thursday, December 9th at 6:30pm! We'll be reading Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly. And make sure to attend the Hidden Figures screening at the library the previous week, on Thursday, December 2nd.


Thanks so much for joining me! Looking forward to going on this anti-racism journey together. If you have questions, you can leave a comment or send me an email at: scorreia@duxbury.ocln.org




The black and yellow Black Lives Matter logo

The trans pride flag with the phrase "libraries are for everyone" over the blue, pink, and white stripes

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