Experiences, In My Own Words, Lifestyle, Travel

Realizing My Fight for Education at George Peabody Library

History

George Peabody Library sits on the Mt. Vernon Campus of Johns Hopkins University. Founded in 1857 with a donation of $300,000 by George Peabody to create an accessible cultural center of learning for all. The original structure was finished in 1866, but the library seen today was finished in 1878 and designed by architect Edmund George Lind. When it opened, it was dedicated to the kindness and hospitality of Baltimore. At its inception, the librarians curated and pursued a list of 50,000 specific books to line the shelves regardless of price or difficulty. Today, the library stacks are home to a collection of more than 300,000 works ranging from rare first editions to 15th century tomes, including first edition Hawthornes, Melvilles, and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. The rare book rooms’ newest books date from the 1700s. The collection is always growing with a focus on 18th and 19th century works. 

Walking into the main atrium, the eye is met with stacks five tiers high, lined by ornamental cast-iron balconies. The library is capped by a stunning skylight soaring 61 feet above quiet readers below, illuminating the entire space with a warm comfort so rarely found in rooms so large. Created to be free and open to the public, despite changing hands multiple times, it is still a free and open library to the public. Though the collection is non-circulating, readers and researchers can explore the works while enjoying its immense beauty. 

I was in awe.
It is immensely beautiful.

Visit

Visiting George Peabody Library has been really the only thing left on my Bucket List for years. I have actively been making plans and trying to go for many, many years. Those plans fell through every time. In October, I went on a roadtrip to Washington DC. There were lots of plans with lots of activities. When asked what I wanted to see on the trip, the only thing I said, “I’d like to take a trip to Baltimore and see the library.” 

Done.

We took a day trip to Baltimore and I fell a little bit in love with the city. I went when I was 18 and adored it. As an adult with an even better grasp and love for history, I was in heaven. Historically, it’s a fascinating city. Architecturally, it’s stunning. Culturally, wow. It sits at an intersection of so many interests of mine as a human, learner, and writer of social justice. I would love to go back and spend more time existing there. 

Parking in front of the Mt. Vernon campus, the building is as gorgeous as every other 19th century building in the neighborhood. But there was nothing differentiating it from all the other incredible façades. So much so, I tried going in the side door as it was just as magnificent as the main entrance. Even standing in front of the door, I was vibrating with anticipation. Actually the whole drive there.

Getting to the library, we had to walk through the entryway, take a left, and then walk through a large room of stuff, which was probably a museum of sorts. I should have looked, but I was ready to see what I had come to see and didn’t really pay any attention. Obviously. And also fighting off an anxious pee feeling that was totally unnecessary and over the top. The moment I could see through the doorway, I started crying. I couldn’t help it. It was very embarrassing. A bad case of Stendahls Syndrome. Of course there’s a video because my friend is an asshat and documents everything. I wandered and cried. Thank God, I eventually stopped crying and kept wandering. I tiptoed through card catalogs, read every plaque, sat in awe of the sheer beauty, size, and knowledge this one room held. I took a crap ton of photos. So many pictures. None of which will ever do the room justice, though they’re brilliant. I don’t know what I expected. But I didn’t expect the library to be just a massive room in an even bigger building, yet it is. 

I spent two hours soaking in that moment I had waited so long to enjoy. 

I will always explore card catalogues.

More Than Stendahls Syndrome

As I walked into George Peabody Library, I was swept with so many complex emotions. I started crying. I tried to play it cool, but I am not a chill person. Part of me did cry because of the immense, architectural beauty. It’s art. Part of me cried because I was with someone who had no idea how much that moment meant to me but made it happen anyways. Sometimes, small things are not small things. 

I stood there crying and sniffling for more than just Stendahls Syndrome.

Libraries always have a tendency to bring up the emotional side of me. It does exist, very, very deep down. As a writer, I know how much effort one book requires. As a writer in the time of computers makes it far easier, faster, and less physically taxing to actually write a book. Imagine writing an entire book with a quill… imagine the typos. My hand hurts thinking about that. The amount of knowledge in that one room alone is more than I will ever acquire no matter how dedicated I am to the pursuit. Libraries are a testament to the lives of people who dedicated themselves to gaining and proliferating knowledge. In their own ways, many of which I do not agree with, they were trying to make the world a better place. That is what I also aspire to do. It’s hard not to be a little overcome with emotion when one steps back from themselves to acknowledge the effort put into the existence and purpose of libraries. I do not believe in God. I do not go to church. I do believe in knowledge. Truth is my God. Libraries are my sanctuary. 

Standing just inside the door as a gay woman, I was hit with more than awe. This library was not meant for me. As a woman, an out gay woman, had I walked into the library upon its construction, I would have been imprisoned existing the way I do. Hell, there are a great many places today I could still be arrested or even executed for existing as I am. It was built in a time when 20% (optimistic) of the population was illiterate and less than 2% of the population went to college. Fuck women on that statistic, there isn’t a percentage available. Wesleyan, the first women’s college, only opened twenty years prior. George Peabody Library was meant for everyone, but not really. It was created in a time where the “everyone” was implicitly understood as white men, maybe refined, respectable ladies who were educated but not too much. I am not either of those things by today’s standards let alone the standards of 1860s America.

The first Ivy’s—Princeton and Yale—didn’t even start admitting women until 1969. Women have had to fight with everything we have, including our lives, for the privilege, the right to receive an education. 

Education. Knowledge. That is the path forward. Ensuring women—49.72% of the population—are educated is how the world turns around. Yet there are so many roadblocks for us. They’ve been lessened in this country and others by the lives and fights of so many women who have gone before us. But there are still so many obstacles. From societal pressures, laws, cost, so on and so forth. 

Malala was shot in the head because she advocated for girls’ education in 2012.

I’m angry. 

I am angry for all women. But this hits home for me. For over a decade I have, in so many unknowing ways, downplayed my fight for education. I have never been quiet about the fact I was a stripper to pay for college. So often, people hear “stripping” and latch on. They want those stories. It’s unique, and I’m open about it. I’m a novelty. I’m an information resource fountain about a taboo yet extremely intriguing topic from anecdotal and scholarly standpoints. I know my shit, and I lived it. The part about stripping to PAY for college is glanced over. I think, emotionally, I always glanced over it too. Standing in the George Peabody Library, for whatever reason, it hit me. I did all of that to learn.  

I graduated in 2014 from Cornell College with a triple major in Literature, French, and Russian with an emphasis in Literary Translation and Analysis. I did it in four years. I paid for it by working 100+ hours a week (it is possible, hard, yet possible), taking my clothes off for men who didn’t give a fuck if I lived or died, figuring out better ways to withstand the physical and psychological violence. I did all of that so I could have an EDUCATION. I tried so many other ways. But I was shit out of luck. When I went to the financial aid office, I was told to join the military, get married, have a child, or drop out and wait until I turned 26. None of those were options. So I stepped outside of respectable society for knowledge, ultimately, a piece of paper.

And I am so fucking proud of myself for doing that. I fought for my education. I gave up so much. I still live with the repercussions of that decision and I always will. I knew what I was doing and the ripple effects it would have on my life and future, intellectually. I was not stupid. My eyes were wide open. As much as they can be. Reality is always different. I don’t regret it. I never have. I wish I’d had other options, a choice. I wish the country we live in prioritized people rather than money. I wish men knew how to treat women, all women—sex workers included—well. I wish college wasn’t so expensive. I would also do it again. Knowing everything I know now, I made the right choice when I was left with no choices to make. I chose an education above all else. 

The fucked up part… I made that choice twelve years ago. 

TWELVE. 

A year before Malala was shot on the other side of the world in her own fight for women’s education. I was sitting on a strip club counter studying when the notification popped up on my phone. I live in a first-world country, and I was still forced to fight for an education.

In so many ways, it was a different time, but all that’s really changed is college is more expensive and stripping is only infinitesimally less villainized. Even then, as a poor, desperate college student, I knew I was so privileged. I am a white woman. I was “straight” when I started stripping. I had every seeming advantage. I still had to fight to learn. I dodged sexual assault, rape threats, death threats, a shooting, knives, and more over the course of four years so I could graduate, move on, get a good job, build a life.  

So often, I come across as straight-laced. I am. I like rules. But I’ve always been a rebel. I have always pushed back. I do not fit in the society that is, but I’m trying to open society so there’s a place for me, women, minorities, the LGBTQIA+ community, and everyone who feels othered.

My fight for education looks different than most women’s. Yet, it’s so similar. I leveraged sex and femininity in the same way women have for all of written history to access information, power, safety, comfort, literally everything. I took the only thing I had—my body and mind—to dare to grasp for more than what was being offered. I succeeded. I didn’t die. I get to move on and rebuild and heal. I get to use the knowledge I worked so hard for to advocate for other women so one day no woman will be turned away from learning. 

bisous un обьятий,
RaeAnna

11..., Lifestyle

11… Books for Women’s History Month

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Hanging out in the Iowa State Law Library in Des Moines, Iowa. | Skirt | Sweater | Shoes |

Every year, I like to read books dedicated to a few of the heritage months. Last month, I did not read as much for Black History Month as I’d hoped, oh well. I use the heritage months as a way to educate myself. 

The one month I don’t celebrate through my reading list is Women’s History Month. I don’t need to. Not that I’m the most educated person on the topic, most of the books I crack are written by and about women. I find them more interesting. Gender studies is one of my favorite topics to read about. I tend to have to go out of my way to read books by and about men in the fiction genre – history is another story altogether. I just don’t care as much about the protagonists when they’re men. Sorry, but not actually. I have always thought a woman’s story, no matter who she is/was, is far more engaging to me than those of men. Men are great, sure, but I’d rather spend my time reading about my people. 

I completely and full-heartedly support Women’s History Month, but I don’t make a point of dedicating my reading list to it. My entire reading list, all year long is a devotion to women, our history, our issues, our future. If you want to read more books about and by women, here are eleven of the books and authors who opened my mind and enthralled me as a young reader, as a student, and as an adult!

  1. Rose in Bloom Louisa May Alcott
  2. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Harriet Jacobs
  3. The Awakening Kate Chopin
  4. Funny in Farsi Firoozeh Dumas
  5. All The Single Ladies Rebecca Traister  
  6. Americanah Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  7. Reading Lolita in Tehran Azar Nafisi
  8. Homegoing Yaa Gyasi
  9. Herland Charlotte Perkins Gilman
  10. The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir
  11. To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna

Experiences, Travel

Ames Public Library

I grew up in Ames, Iowa. Growing up the library was a mainstay in my life, and it often comes up when discussing childhood memories. The house I spent my first eight years in was located about half a mile from the library, so my mother, brother, and I would regularly go for walks to return and check out books.

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When I was in Ames last month, I revisited the library for the first time in almost a decade. The library I remember as a child does not exist anymore. It has the same location, a lot of the same exterior, and the same name, but it went under an extensive renovation and expansion a few years ago. Walking through the library, I recognized nothing. It had vastly changed for the better. I think the expansion and renovation is amazing. It was a little bittersweet for me, but I think money is best spent on books and knowledge and community outreach, which a library epitomizes. I wandered around with my parents enjoying the newness of the building until I wandered into the kid’s section of the library.

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As a little girl, there was a display case made of wood. Every month or few weeks, the display behind glass would change to reflect the season, activities, or holidays. It was the first, the last, and my favorite thing I looked at whenever I went to the library. Even as a teenager, I would stop by the display to take a peak. I had forgotten about the display. Like childhood, it had disappeared into a fuzzy haze I like to call the past. When I walked into the children’s section at the library, the first thing I saw was the display. In a library I no longer recognized, the display had remained the same. So many memories came rushing back all at once. I am normally a very level headed and non-emotional person. I do not cry often. As I stood there looking at the display with my Mom and Dad, I started to tear up. We were taking pictures for this article, and unfortunately, there are no pictures where I was not teary eyed. It’s funny how childhood memories can do that to you: sneak up and pounce out of nowhere.

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Libraries hold memories for a lot of people I am sure. The library holds so many memories from my childhood. I grew up in that library in a way. For me, the library was the epitome of the world. Knowledge was always the key to everything. If I could access the knowledge the library held, I would have access to the world. Or at least, that’s how it felt when I was little.

I read A Midsummer Night’s Dream in second grade. I was inspired. When I was done, the first place I went was the library. I had no idea how to navigate the library, so my mother taught me. This was in the era when the card catalogue still existed next to the computer while everything was digitized. My mother taught me how to look up books in the card catalogue and then through the computer. At first, it was difficult, and I kept having to ask my Mom for help. Eventually, I got the hang of things. It was the clouds parting and the sun shining through moment for me. I was able to find books about history, literature, language, and more.

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The library was the beginning of the story of my life that would unfold.

In college, I worked all four years at the library. I enjoyed it immensely. It was a wonderful way to spend my academic career surrounded by the books I had worshiped my entire life. At Cornell, I studied Literature, French, and Russian, which is basically a triple degree in how to read well. In my life after college, I am now a freelance literary translator and editor and writer, a senior editor at a literary magazine, a rampant reader, and a book blogger – obviously, you are here reading this.

The Ames Public Library founded a passion that will stay with me forever just like the memories I cherish.