Director of Libraries Message for June
This month Santa Cruz Public Libraries are proud to support the 50th anniversary of Santa Cruz Pride. As we have in previous years, on June 1st you’ll see SCPL’s celebrated Book Cart Drill Team in the Pride Parade and further resources at our table at the Pride Festival. In this special year we have offered numerous programs as part of the “Pride Thursdays” series and will continue events into June with the Pride documentary series at the Live Oak Library Annex, numerous Pride Story Times, Queer Gaming, and in July a special event to celebrate The Lavender Reader, a local magazine published from 1986-1998.
As a gay man myself, this is personal. My husband and I have been warmly welcomed by the Santa Cruz County community since moving here last July and we do not take that for granted. When I was a teenager growing up in a small rural town, there was no representation I could find about people like me in our local library, no information about what it meant to be gay other than what we saw on TV news about the AIDS Epidemic which scared so many young people like me deeper into the closet. It wasn’t until I was in college that I found out about gay writers such as Walt Whitman, James Baldwin, and Paul Monette in the larger libraries. They didn’t define me, but their works helped me understand to be less afraid of becoming myself.
Libraries and the books in them are a safe place to explore, to learn, to be curious, and in my case, to analyze deeply personal issues before I felt confident and comfortable enough to say them out loud. Luckily, the diversity of lived experiences making their way into print today is far richer and far more easily found on library shelves than in the 1980s. You can find a selection of Pride related book lists, and other information about Pride Month in Santa Cruz here.
Finally, to make this 50th Anniversary of Santa Cruz Pride extra special, we have a Pride themed library card arriving in branches this June to add to the diversity of options you can choose from when registering for a library card. Check it out at your local Santa Cruz Public Library branch and we look forward to seeing many of you on June 1st at the Parade and Festival!
Christopher Platt
Director of Libraries
Mensaje del Director de Bibliotecas
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