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For this week's episode of the New York Public Library Podcast, we present discussions presented by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture on two documentaries about icons Maya Angelou and John Lewis. To talk about American Masters - And Still I Rise, a film about the Pulitzer-nominated Dr. Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander, Director of Creativity and Free Expression at the Ford Foundation; Rita Coburn Whack, co-director and co-producer of Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise; Louis Gossett, Jr., Academy Award-winning actor; and Colin Johnson, Co-Founder and Principal of Caged Bird Legacy joined Director of the Schomburg Center, Kevin Young. Get in the Way: The Journey of John Lewis is a documentary film about Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights icon and the winner of the National Book Award for Young People's Literature for March: Book Three. It is discussed by Arva Rice, President and CEO of the New York Urban League; activist and advocate Phil Pierre; and Ahmad Greene, a core member of the Black Lives Matter Movement. In this week's episode, we're proud to present conversation around generations of activism with some of our nation's most inspiring freedom fighters. 

Each month, The New York Public Library is proud to offer a curated selection of non-fiction authors discussing their work and answering questions from the public at Mid-Manhattan Library. This March, we are presenting talks on topics ranging from Pearl Harbor to gentrification to telling jokes across cultures.

Author talks take place at 6:30 PM on the 6th floor of the library, unless otherwise noted. No reservations are required. Seating is first come, first served. You can also request a library copy of the authors' books by using the catalog links below.

	Wednesday, March 1, 2017 The Past and Future City: How Historic Preservation is Reviving America's Communities with Stephanie Meeks, president and chief executive officer of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. This illustrated lecture explores the many ways that saving and restoring the historic fabric can help a city create thriving neighborhoods, good jobs, and a vibrant economy.
	Thursday, March 2, 2017 Countdown to Pearl Harbor: The Twelve Days to the Attack with Steve Twomey, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. This illustrated lecture provides a fascinating look at the twelve days leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor—the warnings, clues, and missteps.
	Monday, March 6, 2017 Homelessness in New York City: Policymaking from Koch to de Blasio with Thomas J. Main, Professor at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College, City University of New York. This illustrated lecture tells the remarkable story of how America’s largest city has struggled for more than thirty years to meet the crisis of modern homelessness through the landmark development, since the initiation of the Callahan v Carey litigation in 1979, of a municipal shelter system based on a court-enforced right to shelter.
	Wednesday, March 8, 2017 Barney: Grove Press and Barney Rosset, America’s Maverick Publisher and the Battle against Censorship with Michael Rosenthal, former Roberta and William Campbell Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. As the head of Grove Press, Barney Rosset liberated American culture from the constraints of Puritanism. This illustrated lecture explores how Grove's landmark legal victories freed publishers to print what they wanted, and traces Grove's central role in the countercultural ferment of the sixties and early seventies.
	Thursday, March 9, 2017 Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums with Samuel J. Redman, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 1864 a U.S. army doctor dug up the remains of a Dakota man who had been killed in Minnesota. Carefully recording his observations, he sent the skeleton to a museum in Washington, DC, that was collecting human remains for research. In the “bone rooms” of this museum and others like it, a scientific revolution was unfolding that would change our understanding of the human body, race, and prehistory. This illustrated lecture unearths the story of how human remains became highly sought-after artifacts for both scientific research and public display.
	Monday, March 13, 2017 Ten Restaurants That Changed Americawith Paul Freedman, history professor at Yale University, author, and editor. This illustrated lecture offers a daring and original history of dining out in America as told through ten legendary restaurants.
	Wednesday, March 15, 2017 Bridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Languagewith Esther Schor, professor of English at Princeton University, and Sam Green, documentary filmmaker and director of The Universal Language. In this illustrated lecture and film screening, writer Esther Schor and director Sam Green trace the life of the invented language Esperanto. The lecture will be followed by a screening of the documentary The Universal Language (30 minutes) and a Q&A with the presenters.
	Monday, March 20, 2017 How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood with Peter Moskowitz, freelance journalist and graduate of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. This lecture uncovers the massive, systemic forces behind gentrification in New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, and New York.
	Tuesday, March 21, 2017 The Joint Ventured Nation: Why America Needs a New Foreign Policy with Edward Goldberg, who teaches international political economy at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. This lecture explores the future of American foreign policy through the lens of globalization.
	Wednesday, March 22, 2017 Toxic Inequality: How America’s Wealth Gap Destroys Mobility, Deepens the Racial Divide, and Threatens Our Future with Thomas M. Shapiro, professor of Sociology and Public Policy at Brandeis University. This lecture reveals how forces of wealth disparity and racial inequality trap families in place.
	Monday, March 27, 2017 Feeding Gotham: The Political Economy and Geography of Food in New York, 1790–1860 with Gergely Baics, assistant professor of history and urban studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. This illustrated lecture explores how America’s first metropolis grappled with the challenge of provisioning its inhabitants.
	Tuesday, March 28, 2017 "Sharing Jokes across Cultures: Problems and Possibilities" with Carol C. Gould, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Political Science, City University of New York and author of Interactive Democracy: The Social Roots of Global Justice. Drawing on the author's recent book as well as current events, this illustrated lecture analyzes several examples of jokes—American, Jewish, Irish, Egyptian, Eastern European, etc.—and some hard cases of offensive jokes and cartoons that have provoked visceral reactions from various cultural communities. It also considers the uses of humor for enhancing cross-cultural understanding in contemporary social and political life.
	Wednesday, March 29, 2017 No Friends but the Mountains: Dispatches from the World's Violent Highlands with Judith Matloff, who teaches conflict reporting at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. In this illustrated lecture, a veteran war correspondent describes her journeys to remote mountain communities across the globe—from Albania and Chechnya to Nepal and Colombia—to investigate why so many conflicts occur at great heights.
	Thursday, March 30, 2017 City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New Yorkwith Tyler Anbinder, a professor of history and former chair of the History Department at George Washington University. This illustrated lecture provides a vivid sense of what New York looked like, sounded like, smelled like, and felt like over the centuries of its development and maturation into the city we know today.

As always, we have many interesting and informative films, book discussions, and computer and technology classes on our program calendar. If you enjoy sitting back and listening to a good story, and you want to celebrate Women's History Month with us, try our Story Time for Grown-ups, where we'll be reading the work of women authors. If you like to share your literary discoveries with other readers (and love books and movies), join us on Friday, March 10 for Open Book Night.  This month's theme is Books Go to the Movies.  If you'd prefer a book discussion group, we hold a monthly Contemporary Classics Book Discussion. This month's book is Continental Drift by Russell Banks. We are also excited to present a brand-new series at the library called Mid-Sentence: Writers in Conversation.

All of our programs and classes are free, so why not come and check one out? Hope to see you soon at the library!

The evening after the February blizzard, a small group of book lovers gathered in the Corner Room for our monthly Open Book Night. Our theme was “Ain’t Nothin’ but a Love Thang”, and we asked readers to share books they love, books about love, and books about things they love. Love seems to be our preferred February theme. You can find our readers' "book love" recommendations from last year and the year before in our reading lists.

We'd love to hear about your favorite books! Join us for Open Book Night on the second Friday of the month from 6 - 7 PM. For March 10, our theme is "Books Go to the Movies". Come tell us about books you love that have been made into (good or bad) movies, books about making movies, Hollywood history, memoirs and bios of your favorite stars, or any other books that connect to movies. 

Our first readerJoan shared a book about a place that she loves. She recommended An Old Merchant’s House: Life at Home in New York City 1835-1865 by Mary L. Knapp, which tells the story of the Tredwell family after they moved to a new townhouse uptown on East Fourth Street in Manhattan. This house, designated a landmark in 1965, has been a museum since 1936. Not only the exterior, but also the interior decor in the Merchant’s House Museum is virtually unchanged since 1832. The author, Mary L. Knapp, the museum historian, also documented the struggle to preserve the house in Miracle on Fourth Street: Saving an Old Merchant’s House. To learn more about the Merchant’s House and its history, watch this episode of Blueprint NYC.

Joan describes An Old Merchant’s House as “an interesting and well-constructed book about life and loves in this period in the history of New York City. The author vividly and accurately portrays life as it was. Anyone interested in the development of the city will thoroughly enjoy how it has been presented.”
 

Talk of the Merchant’s House led readers to suggest other books they associated with lower Manhattan in the 19th century: Washington Squareby Henry James, O. Henry’s short stories, and Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener. And not far from the Merchant’s House on East Fourth Street was Pfaff’s Saloon, home to New York City’s original bohemians, who lived a very different lifestyle from the wealthy Tredwell family just a few blocks away. Justin Martin describes this artistic circle in his 2014 book Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians.

Readers at Open Book NIght just love to recommend books about New York. When we had a dedicated New York evening, our readers recommended these titles.

Our next reader was a fan of tragic love stories. He told us that he particularly recommended two plays by another New Yorker, Robert E. Sherwood, The Petrified Forest and Waterloo Bridge. Both plays were adapted into films. Archie Mayo’s 1936 film of The Petrified Forest, starring Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, and Humphrey Bogart, and Mervyn LeRoy’s 1940 film of  Waterloo Bridge starring Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor are available to borrow from the Library.

Amy recommended a novel that was part tragic romance. She revealed that she did not immediately fall in love with The A to Z of You and Meby James Hannah, finding the narrative structure to be a bit “all over the place” at first, but as she continued she appreciated how the author used shifting timeframes to tell this sad hospice care love story about lost love, new friendship, and coming to terms with a life.

My pick was When in French: Love in a Second Languageby New Yorker writer Lauren Collins. In this recent memoir, Collins recounts her journey to bilingualism, struggling to learn French after she and her French husband move from London to Geneva. As her fluency grows, she gains insights into her own character and way of seeing the world as well as a deeper understanding of who her husband is. Collins is a great storyteller, and she intersperses her personal language learning experiences with mini essays on the nature of language, offering the reader a primer on basic linguistic theory as well as an entertaining look at her own language experiences. You can preview the book by reading Lauren Collins’s essay Love in Translation, published in the New Yorker in August 2016.

Thanks to everyone who joined us for Open Book Night!  We enjoyed talking about books with you and hearing your recommednations. Check out these other reading lists to see books recommended at past Open Book Nights and please add your own recommendations in the comments below. Happy reading!

Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, is famous all over the world for his iconic children's books and illustrations. But what most people don't know is that a lot of his stories are inspired by complex political issues. If you really recall your Seuss, you'll be able to pick out exactly what inspired these famous books. Take our quiz to test your knowledge!

Welcome to The Librarian Is In, The New York Public Library's podcast about books, culture, and what to read next.

Subscribe on iTunes | Get it on Google Play

How do libraries help immigrants and underserved communities? Find out with NYPL's very own Adriana Blancarte-Hayward. Plus: major love for great journalism, time travel, ghosts, Frank's hair, frozen yogurt, and Salt-n-Pepa.

What We're Reading Now

The five finalists for the Bernstein award for the best journalism of the year:

• The Morning They Came for Us by Janine di Giovanni
• Dark Money by Jane Mayer
• Cast Away by Charlotte McDonald-Gibson
• Pandemic by Sonia Shah
• Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge

"Journalism in the Age of Trump" event:

• Video:Author Talks: Journalism in the Age of Trump
• Audio:Author Talks: Journalism in the Age of Trump

Enigma Variations by André Aciman

All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai

Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December by George Saunders

Guest Star: Adriana Blancarte-Hayward

Immigrant Services at NYPL

• Citizenship resources
• New Americans corners
• World Languages collections
• Classes: English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL)

Outlander by Diana Galaldon

Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda

Non-Book Recommendations

Adriana: Press Reader database and Parks and Rec

Gwen: Yasso frozen yogurt bars (and the Forbes article about it being started by two millenial friends )

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The Library has just announced the acquisition of the Lou Reed Archive, and we're celebrating the life and legacy of this rock icon with a series of displays, programs, and performances at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building and the Library for the Performing Arts. Lou Reed's incredible music career, both as a solo artist and as a member of the Velvet Underground, spanned over 50 years and influenced generations. If you want to learn more about Lou Reed, the Velvet Underground, or the artistic, cultural, and political scene of the 1960's when he rose to prominence, here are 10 great books to check out at your local branch.

Rock, Counterculture and the Avant-Garde, 1966-1970: How The Beatles, Frank Zappa, and The Velvet Underground Defined an Era by Doyle Greene

Scholar Doyle Greene analyzes how the Velvet Underground incorporated avant-garde into rock, and how their experimental style played a huge role in their influence on the genre for decades to come.

Andy Warhol: A Biography by Wayne Koestenbaum

Andy Warhol was an incredibly important figure in the development of the Velvet Underground; he was their manager, and his notoriety and connections helped elevate their status in the New York music scene. Check out this biography of the famed American artist for more on the fascinating intersection between pop art and rock music in 1960's New York City.

The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage by Todd Gitlin

For a primer on the anti-authority movements of the 1960's, particularly the nationwide protests against the Vietnam War, consult this acclaimed book by scholar and critic Todd Gitlin, former president of Students for a Democratic Society.

Just Kids by Patti Smith

Patti Smith's spellbinding memoir and account of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe includes vivid stories of the music scene in New York in the late 60's and 70's, when Smith, the Velvet Underground, and others were shaping New York punk at clubs like CBGB and Max's Kansas City.

There's a Riot Going On: Revolutionaries, Rock Stars, and the Rise and Fall of the '60s by Peter Doggett

For a wider picture of the intersection between music and politics in the 1960's, read this history by Peter Doggett on how leftist movements, rock, and folk revival conflicted and sometimes collaborated in the turbulent decade.

The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America by James T. Patterson

1965, the year the Velvet Underground were introduced to Andy Warhol, was a year of great political upheaval across the country, including the Selma to Montgomery Marches, anti-Vietnam protests, and the Watts Rebellion. Historian James T. Patterson chronicles the tumultuous year that divided America, eroded domestic peace, and sparked new changes in culture and music in this incisive book.

Lou Reed's New York by Lou Reed

In addition to his astounding music career, Lou Reed was also a gifted photographer. This volume collects over 100 of his photographs of New York, the city that played host to and was shaped by Reed's music.

Witness to the Revolution: Radicals, Resisters, Vets, Hippies, and the Year America Lost Its Mind and Found Its Soul by Clara Bingham

This oral history, constructed from dozens of interviews with activist figures such as Bill Ayers, Carl Bernstein, and Jane Fonda, traces the explosion of the myriad social movements that defined America's protests in the volatile 1960's.

I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp by Richard Hell

Richard Hell, founding member of Television and frontman of Richard Hell and the Voidoids, was one of the most prominent figures in the 1970's punk scene, which was heavily influenced by Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground. Hell details his journey from anonymity and poverty to punk rock stardom in this gripping memoir.

Boom! Voices of the Sixties by Tom Brokaw

Famed journalist Tom Brokaw offers this sweeping portrait of 1960's America, touching on music, race relations, the feminist movement, and war in interviews with Bill Clinton, Gloria Steinem, and the Rev. Andrew Young, among others.

Celebrating Lou Reed: 1942-2013

On February 18, 2016, the Bronx Library Center invited Bob Gumbs to discuss his book about Bronx history, Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life in the Bronx From the 1930s to the 1960s. He discussed how the Bronx has changed over the years, highlighting the cultural aspects of the Bronx in the mid-20th century, the importance of schooling in his life, and the racial segregation that impacted Bronx life. His parents immigrated to New York City from the Caribbean Islands in 1942. They landed in the Morrisania neighborhood in the Bronx. He mentioned his love for the Bronx, though he currently lives in Harlem. The book was written from an oral history project that originated from the African American studies department at Fordham University. 300 interviews were given to Bronx residents, 17 of which are recounted in the work. 

Arts

Music thrived in the South Bronx in the 1950s, known as the "Harlem of the Bronx". There were many plays and clubs in the Bronx where emerging artists performed. Arthur Crier (1935-2004) was a singer and songwriter who performed at the Apollo, Freddie's and Blue Morocco. He recounted that Morrisania was a good place to learn about music. Jimmy Owens performed for the Jazz Arts Society, which was started by Bob Gumbs. When people moved to the Bronx, they brought their musical culture with them. For instance, calypso came from the Caribbean Islands, jazz came from Harlem, and rhythm and blues arose in the South.  Hip hop originated in the Bronx.   

School

Gumbs experience growing up in the Bronx was that schools were safe. Also, interestingly enough, the schools were racially integrated, but the neighborhoods were not. The schools were supposedly better in the neighborhoods that were largely populated by Jewish families. Schools gave out free instruments to students to use. James Pruitt became a teacher at Morris High School, which was one of the first schools to become racially integrated. He grew up in Harlem then moved  to the Bronx during the Great Depression since housing was cheaper. 

Race

The south Bronx used to be largely Jewish, but all of that changed. In the 1930s, African Americans and Hispanics began to immigrate to New York City. They settled in the Bronx since they were looking for affordable housing. However, Blacks were not allowed to live on the Grand Concourse, and they were also excluded from a swim club. A White Castle restaurant was picketed because it did not employ Blacks. Race riots occurred in Harlem, but none happened in the Bronx. Gumbs was largely insulated from racial tension when he was growing up, but many members of the audience remembered the discord that was caused by problematic race relations and the influx of gangs and drugs into the Bronx in the 1950s.

Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life in the Bronx From the 1930s to the 1960s by Mark Naison and Bob Gumbs, 2016

Books about Bronx history

In the U.S. Department of Labor blog  What 's Next for My Career? Byron Zuidema, deputy assistant secretary of Labor for the Department's Employment and Training Administration,  introduces My Next Move, a web-base interactive tool from the Labor Department for job seekers. Users can find careers through a keyword search, by browsing industries, or through the O'NET Interest Profiler, a tool that offers customized career suggestions based on interest, education and work experience.

Brooklyn Woods is actively recruiting for their Free  Woodworker Job Training Program. Orientations are held every Wednesday at 10 am sharp.  Please bring a photo ID.  Be prepared to fill out an application and to take a math, reading and measurement test. Orientation lasts 2 hours.  If you have questions, call 718-389-3636.  

ACS Career Training Institute offers training skills in bookkeeping, accounting, medical office, medical administration and office administration. Internship and job placement assistance included.  Please call 718-661-9771 ext. 102.

The NYCHA Resident Training Academy (NRTA) offers Janitorial  and Construction training tracks.  Recruitment is now open for Construction Training and Janitorial Training. Please call 718-289-8100.

The Chinese-American Planning Council Workforce Development Division offers education, training, placement, and post placement support services to job seekers.  Job training programs include BuildingWorks Pre-ApprenticeshipTraining, Hospitality Careers and LVMH Fundamentals in Luxury Retail Training.

Career Development workshop on Monday, March 6, 2017, 10:30 am - 12:30 pm at Brooklyn Workforce 1 Career Center , 250 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201.  This workshop is for all interested job seekers to learn the value of the career exploration process and how the process can positively impact  your career path.  Please call 718-613-3811 for more information.

DAV Recruit Military Veterans Job Fair on Thursday, March 9, 2017 11:00 am - 3:00 pm at Metropolitan Pavilion, 123 West 18th  Street, New York, NY 10011.  60+ companies with jobs include Apple, City of New York Fire Department, CVS Health, Deutsche Bank, Eli Lilly and Company, First Command Financial Planning, Lowe's Companies, Inc. and more.  This event is for all who have served in the U.S. Military, national guard, reserves and their spouses.  For more information, call 844-206-7750 or visit RecruitMilitary.com/NewYork

Paradise Shops will present a recruitment on Thursday, March 9, 2017, 10 am - 2 pm for Brand Sales Associaate (8 openings) at The  Paradise Shops Lagardere, Flushing Workforce 1 Career Center, 138-60 Barclay Avenue, 2nd Floor, Flushing, NY 11355.

Penda Aiken, Inc. will present a recruitment on Thursday, March 9, 2017, 10 am - 1 pm for Program Administrative  - Disaster Recovery  (1 Temporary opening), Healthcare Recruiter (1 Temporary opening), Payroll Manager (1 Temporary opening), HR Manager (1 temporary opening), English Language Arts Teacher (1 Temporary opening), Registered Nurse (1 Temporary opening), Receptionist (1 Temporary opening), at New York State Department of Labor - Workforce 1 Career Center, 250 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201.  Please contact Ms. Diaz at 718-613-3696.

Spanish Speaking Resume Writing  workshop on Thursday, March 9, 2017, 12:30 - 2:30 pm. at Flushing Workforce 1 Career Center, 138-60 Barclay Avenue, 2nd Floor, Flushing, NY 11355.  All interested jobseekers will learn to organize, revise and update resumes.     

Basic Resume Writing  workshop on Thursday, March 9, 2017, 1:30 - 3 pm at Brooklyn Workforce 1 Career Center, 250 Schermerhorn  Street,  Brooklyn, NY 11201.  Participants will learn the purpose of a resume, chronological and combination resumes and select the appropriate type for their specific needs.

SAGEWorks  Workshop: Re-Invent Your Career on Thursday, March 9, 2017, 6-7:30 pm, at the SAGE Center, 305 7th Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10001.  SAGEWorks assists people 40 years and older in learning relevant, cutting-edge job search skills in a LGBT-friendly environment.

Job Postings at New York City Workforce 1.  

Apprenticeship Opportunities in New York City.

Brooklyn Community  Board 14: Available jobs

The New York City Employment and Training Coalition (NYCE&TC) is an association of 200 community-based organizations, educational institutions, and labor unions that annually provide job training and employment services to over 750,000 New Yorkers, including welfare recipients, unemployed workers, low-wage workers, at-risk youth, the formerly incarcerated, immigrants and the mentally and physically disabled. View NYCE&TC Job Listings.

Digital NYC is the official online hub of the New York City startup and technology ecosystem, bringing together every company, startup, investor, event, job, class, blog, video, workplace, accelerator, incubator, resource, and organization in the five boroughs. Search jobs by category on this site.

St. Nicks Alliance Workforce Development provides Free Job Training and Educational Programs in Environmental Response and Remediation Tec (ERRT). Commercial Driver's License, Pest Control Technician Training (PCT), Employment Search and Prep Training and Job Placement, Earn Benefits and Career Path Center. For information and assistance, please visit St. Nicks Alliance Workforce Development or call 718-302-2057 ext. 202.

Brooklyn Workforce Innovations helps jobless and working poor New Yorkers establish careers in sectors that offer good wages and opportunities for advancement. Currently, BWI offers free job training programs in four industries: commercial driving, telecommunications cable installation, TV and film production, and skilled woodworking.

CMP (formerly Chinatown Manpower Project) in lower Manhattan is now recruiting for a free training in Quickbooks, Basic Accounting, and Excel. This training is open to anyone who is receiving food stamps but no cash assistance. Class runs for eight weeks, followed by one-on-one meetings with a job developer. CMP also provides Free Home Health Aide Training for bilingual English/Cantonese speakers who are receiving food stamps but no cash assistance. Training runs Mondays through Fridays for six weeks and includes test prep and taking the HHA certification exam. Students learn about direct care techniques such as taking vital signs and assisting with personal hygiene and nutrition. For more information for the above two training programs, email: info@cmpny.org, call 212-571-1690, or visit. CMP also provides tuition-based healthcare and business trainings free to students who are entitled to ACCESS funding.

Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW) trains women and places them in careers in the skilled construction, utility, and maintenance trades. It helps women achieve economic independence and a secure future. For information call 212-627-6252 or register online.

Grace Institute provides tuition-free, practical job training in a supportive learning community for underserved New York area women of all ages and from many different backgrounds. For information call 212-832-7605.

Please note this page will be revised when more recruitment events for the week of March  5 become available.

This week was the premiere of Dustin Lance Black's new historical miniseries When We Rise, a chronicle of LGBTQ activist movements from the 1970's to now directed by Black, Gus Van Sant, Dee Rees, and Thomas Schlamme. We are glad that the stories of these brave individuals are getting a share of the spotlight as the miniseries airs this week on ABC. If you want to learn more about LGBTQ activism from the 1970’s and beyond, check out these histories, biographies, and databases from collections on the activists and movements that shifted American politics in the time period.

Movement Histories

Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney. Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America

Jim Downs. Stand By Me: The Forgotten History of Gay Liberation

Lillian Faderman. The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle

Linda Hirshman. Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution

Alethia Jones and Virginia Eubanks, with Barbara Smith. Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith.

Eric Marcus. Making Gay History: The Half-Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights

Kevin J. Mumford. Not Straight, Not White: Black Gay Men from the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis

Uriel Quesada, Letitia Gomez, and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz. Queer Brown Voices: Personal Narratives of Latina/o LGBT Activism

Susan Stryker. Transgender History

Activist Biographies and Memoirs

Gloria Anzaldúa. Borderlands (La Frontera)

Kelly Cogswell. Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger

Jeanne Cordova. When We Were Outlaws: A Memoir of Love and Revolution

Karla Jay. Tales of the Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation

Audre Lorde. Zami, a New Spelling of My Name

Kevin K. Kumashiro. Restoried Selves: Autobiographies of Queer Asian-Pacific-American Activists

Mario Martino. Emergence : A Transsexual Autobiography

Renée Richards. No Way Renee: The Second Half of my Notorious Life

Michael Schiavi. Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo

Mark Segal. And Then I Danced: Traveling the Road to LGBT Equality

Databases

Archives of Human Sexuality and Identity Database (Available from home with a library card)

Diana Davies Photographs

Check out some of the latest picture books to hit children's room shelves at a branch near you.
 

North, South, East, West by Margaret Wise Brown (Ages 4-8 years)

Per the publisher, "A previously unpublished Margaret Wise Brown story, illustrated by a Geisel Award winner, follows the journey of a little bird who flies to the north, south, east and west before returning home again."

The simple yet sweet words and images are perfect for a Read-Aloud.

Keith Haring: The Boy Who Just Kept Drawking  by Kay Haring (Ages 5-8 years)

"Iconic pop artist Keith Haring comes to life for young readers in this picture book biography lovingly written by his sister."

Wonderful story about an incredible, iconic individual that teaches readers about the importance of passion, persistance, and simply being "You".

Pablo in the Snow  by Teri Sloat  (ages 3-5 years)

"Pablo the lamb discovers how much fun it is to play in the snow, from making trails to sledding and snowball fights with friends to crafting snowmen, but when he heads for home at the end of the day, Pablo realizes he's lost."

A  book about the curious nature of children as well as the  consequences which may sometimes follow. No worries though! It ends happily.

How Do Dinosaurs Choose Their PETS? by Jane Yolen  (ages 3-5 years)

"A riotous new entry in the award-winning series features oversized dinosaur kids who surprise their parents by bringing home a wild menagerie of exotic pets, from tigers and elephants to zebras and boa constrictors."

A fun and silly addition to the "How Do Dinosaurs.." series featuring  it's classic literary recipe of chaotic possibilities followed by calm sensibility and delight. 

The Berenstain Bears Spring Storybook Collection by Stan & Jan Berenstain with Mike Berenstain (ages 4-8 years)

"Join the Berenstain Bears as they celebrate spring in seven classic, sunny stories in TheBerenstain Bears Spring Storybook Collection."

The format of this collection alternates between easy and moderate leveled reading; this would probably be ideal for a child and an adult to take turns reading each of the stories.

 A Season to Bee by Carlos Aponte (ages 3-5 years)

"Fashion illustrator Carlos Aponte gives readers front row seats to the runway show of the season! Join Miss V. McQueen and her band of fashion bugs as they flit and flutter their brilliant colors down the catwalk. Ladybug reds, butterfly golds, and grasshopper greens provide young readers with a chic introduction to the colors found all around us."

Who knew that bugs and fashion are indeed a perfect way to introduce colors and address self-confidence? The storyline is unique and the images are vibrant.  Read- Aloud worthy.

Spring Hare by Eugene Yelchin (ages 4-8 years)

"An adorable baby hare springs into an adventure, following his human friend up, up, and away in this flight of fancy. He follows his friend ever higher, flying through fluffy white clouds, chasing a red airplane through a flock of geese, and soaring into space on a rocket ship, before catching a ride on a shooting star back down to earth—and into his friend’s waiting arms. "

A wordless book that encourages the reader to use their imagination to come up with their own plot. If you think the cover is adorable, just wait until you see the rest!

If you've read one of the books mentioned or plan to, feel free to tell us in the comments section below.

Last week, the tweens at Muhlenberg Library wrapped up the Robo Take Over program.  We spent the mid-winter break learning about basic circuits, conductivity, and building simple robots, which the participants were able to take home at the close of the week.  

If you weren't able to attend a workshop series this time, you can still take a tinker in the world of robotics with one of these books:

NONFICTION

Military Robots by Barbara Alpert: Simple text and full-color photographs describe various military robots

Robot by Roger Bridgman: Informative guide to the amazing world of robotics. Early automata, news stories, and photographs combine to tell the history of robots and their inventors.

Robots by Clive Gifford: Marvel at the giant robot arm that washes airplanes; watch the mighty Robosaurus break a a car in half; discover how robots can clean and guard a house, and more. Includes fun and easy projects!

Robots by Melissa Stewart: Introduces robots and the science behind these amazing machines, including a historic timeline of robot development, common jobs robots perform in the workplace and at home, and robots of the future.
 

PICTURE BOOKS

Junkyard by Mike Austin: Munching Machines enter a huge junkyard and consume all of the waste, then smooth the ground, plant trees and flowers, create a lake and playground, and much more.

Baby Brains and RoboMom by Simon James: Baby  Brains invents RoboMom to do all the household chores and give his tired parents a rest.

Snowbots by Aaron Reynolds:  Rhyming tale of a fun day young robots spend playing in new-fallen snow

Robot Zot!  by Jon Scieszka: On a mission to conquer planet Earth, tiny but fearless Robot Zot and his mechanical sidekick leave a path of destruction as they battle kitchen appliances.

Robo-Sauce by Adam Rubin: A special sauce turns a boy into a robot, and he then transforms everyone and everything into robots, including the book.

Beep! Beep! Go to Sleep! by Todd Tarpley: Three reluctant robots fight off sleep while their young caretaker does his best to get them tocalm down.                                                                                  

EASY READERS 

See Pip Point by David Milgrim: When Pip the mouse floats off with Otto the robot's balloon, Otto and Zee the Bee go to the rescue.

Go, Otto, Go!by David Milgrim (series):  Otto the robot builds a spaceship to take him home.

YOUNG READERS

Rabbit & Robot : the sleepover by Cece Bell: Rabbit is very excited. His friend Robot is coming to sleep over, and Rabbit has made a list of all the things they are going to do: 1. Make pizza 2. Watch TV 3. Play go fish 4. Go to bed. But when Robot wants nuts and bolts instead of vegetables on his pizza and wants to play Old Maid instead of Go Fish, Rabbit doesn't know what to do - those things are not on the list!

Game over, Super Rabbit Boy!  by Thomas Flintham: When King Viking and his evil robot army attack Animal Town, and kidnap Singing Dog, it is up to Super Rabbit Boy, with some help from Sunny and his video game console, to save the day.

Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot  by Dav Pilkey (series): Ricky Ricotta, a small mouse, is being bullied at school, but when he rescues a powerful robot from its evil creator, he acquires a friend and protector--and saves the city from Dr. Stinky.

FICTION

Fuzzy by Tom Angleberger and Paul Dellinger: When Max (Maxine Zealster) befriends her new robot classmate Fuzzy, she helps him navigate Vanguard Middle School and together they reveal the truth behind the Robot Integration Program.

The Wild Robot  by Peter Brown: Roz the robot discovers that she is alone on a remote, wild island with no memory of where she is from or why she is there, and her only hope of survival is to try to learn about her new environment from the island's hostile inhabitants. (on the 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing 2016 list)

Robot Revolution by J. Patterson & Chris Grabenstein:  "Robots on strike! Sammy's underappreciated mechanical helpers cause chaos in the house! It's up to Sammy and his disabled sister Maddie to keep the peace until his inventor mom reveals her secret project…and why it was worth the wait"—Provided by publisher.

Battle of the Bots  by C.J. Richards: The evil Dr. Micron is in jail, but the scandal at TinkerTech has caused a lot of anti-robot feeling in Terabyte Heights, making life difficult for the ten-year-old robotics genius George Gearing and his robot buddy, Jackbot—especially since Micron is the only person who can help George restore his parents, and his price is a jail-break.

The Iron Giant  by Ted Hughes:  "A strange creature stalks the land, eating barbed wire and devouring tractors and plows. The farmers are mystified—and afraid. And then they glimpse him in the night: the Iron Giant, taller than a house, with glowing headlight eyes and an insatiable taste for metal. The hungry giant must be stopped at any cost. Only a young boy named Hogarth is brave enough to befriend the Iron Giant and lead him to a safe home. And only Hogarth knows where to turn when the earth needs a hero—a giant hero—as never before."—from the publisher

The Invention of Hugo Cabret : a novel in words and pictures by Brian Selznick: When twelve-year-old Hugo, an orphan living and repairing clocks within the walls of a Paris train station in 1931, meets a mysterious toyseller and his goddaughter, his undercover life and his biggest secret are jeopardized.

Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor by Jon Scieszka: In his Grandpa Al's garage workshop, child genius Frank Einstein tries to invent a robot that can learn on its own, and after an accident brings wisecracking Klink and overly expressive Klank to life, they set about helping Frank perfect his Antimatter Motor until his archnemesis, T. Edison, steals the robots for his doomsday plan.

The Boy at the End of the World by Greg van Eekhout:  Born half-grown in a world that is being destroyed, Fisher has instinctive knowledge of many things, including that he must avoid the robot that knows his name.

GRAPHIC NOVELS

Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute  by Jarrett J. Krosoczka (series): The school lunch lady is a secret crime fighter who uncovers an evil plot to replace all thepopular teachers with robots.

Robot Frenzy by Erik Craddock:  "When Stone Rabbit and his friends create robots to help out with chores, a glitch in the programming sends the 'bots into a malfunctioning frenzy that threatens to destroy Happy Glades!"—provided by publisher

Hilo: Saving the Whole Wide World by Judd Winick (series): Hilo and his friends must save the world from monsters from another dimension. (on  the 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing 2016 list)

Little Robot by Ben Hatke:  "When a little girl finds an adorable robot in the woods, she presses a button and accidentally activates him for the first time. Now, she finally has a friend. But the big, bad robots are coming to collect the little guy for nefarious purposes, and it's all up to a five-year-old armed only with a wrench and a fierce loyalty to her mechanical friend to save the day!" —provided by publisher

You shouldn’t believe your own press.  Tammany Hall probably took that to heart during their infamous days of Boss Tweed and Democratic machine politics.  But earlier on in their history, they actively made their own press.

Founded in 1789, the Society of Tammany was a fraternal and benevolent society in New York City that focused on the celebration of American identity and culture. The minute books and records of the Society of Tammany from this early national period describe how the society elected its officers, accepted new members, and commemorated important anniversaries such as Washington’s Birthday, the feast day of St. Tammany, Independence Day, Columbus’s Birthday, and Evacuation Day. Each of these celebrations centered on the parades during the day and the patriotic orations and toasts given at public dinners in the evenings.

Alongside more mundane details such as fines for absences and administrative agendas, the Society of Tammany’s minute books have also preserved notes on the organization’s public relations efforts. For instance, the notes surrounding the preparations for and the accounts of events such as the Feast Day of St. Tammany and Washington’s Birthday reveal how much effort Tammany officers made to ensure that local newspapers would report on their events and would accurately print their orations and toasts.

For instance, at the meeting devoted to planning the 1815 Feast Day of St. Tammany, the officers determined that “the society meet on the evening of the Anniversary at 6 o clock and the Oration be delivered at 7 and that the Secretary publish the same in the newspapers.” Furthermore, the officers appointed a committee of its most important members including the society’s president, to “prepare suitable toasts for the occasion.”

On the following page, the writer describes how the society’s members—“joined by a number of their Republican Friends and honoured (sic) by the company of Several Ladies”—enjoyed the “Elegant and Animating Address” and “spent the evening in the most social and convivial manner.” This little snippet was meant to underscore the political relevance and elegance of the occasion. The “company of Several Ladies” deserved particular note because the presence of women was believed to have a calming force on the rambunctious, partisan politics and to be a guarantee of patriotic virtue and decorum.

After the handwritten description of the evening, the society’s secretary pasted a newspaper clipping of the toasts even though the toasts could have easily been handwritten. These newspaper clippings occur three more times in the Society of Tammany’s minute books in honor of Independence Day of 1815, the 1816 Feast Day of St. Tammany, and the 1817 Feast Day.

From a public relations standpoint, it was significant that the society’s celebratory toasts were printed and shared with the public. Pasting this newspaper clipping into their organization’s records functioned as a kind of early modern “re-tweet” and demonstrated the public’s recognition of the organization. In other words, that the local newspapers reported on their events both created and reaffirmed the Society of Tammany’s importance. These members of the Society of Tammany already knew that the newspaper coverage of their event was just as important, if not more important, than the actual event itself. 

About the Early American Manuscripts Project

Today, March 6th, 2017, marks what would have been Will Eisner's 100th birthday. Will Eisner is commonly recognized as the father of the graphic novel and is considered one of the most innovative and influential comic book artists of the 20th century. In 1940, Eisner created what would become his most well-known character, "the Spirit". The "Spirit," a masked detective hero, appeared every Sunday as a comic book insert and was distributed in 20 newspapers until the early 1950s. Unlike other super-heros of the time, "the Spirit" was entirely human with no superpowers, and did not even carry a weapon. 

In May of 1942, Eisner was drafted to serve in World War II, there he was assigned to work on his camp's newspaper. Shortly after that, he began to produce a humorous weekly comic strip entitled Private Dogtag, which told the mis-adventures of Otis Dogtag, a private who was incapable of doing anything right. Eisner soon began to see the effects that these strips had on his fellow soldiers. He realized how he was able to communicate / connect with them and use comics as an informal educational tool. Later, he would go on to create the most inept soldier ever to serve in the United States Army, Joe Dope, a new version of Otis Dogtag.  A Joe Dope comic strip ran in Army Motors (a mimeographed publication that aimed to educate servicemen about equipment maintenance) and the character appeared in numerous posters and other educational materials dealing with preventive maintenance that were distributed at Army bases throughout the US.  

In 1978, Eisner took the comic book industry by surprise when he published his groundbreaking graphic novel A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories. Commonly considered to be one of the first American graphic novels, A Contract with God showed the true potential of comic books when it deviated from the light-hearted or humorous themes that usually appeared in comics.  It introduced subjects that had rarely been explored before, such as poverty, religion, and morality concerns. Eisner demonstrated that he was ahead of his time, but the graphic novel wasn't as prevalent when first published as it would later become. Among comic book artists, it was praised from the start for its experimentation with visual display and format. It took the leap that inspired generations of comic book artists and creators. 

Will Eisner would continue his career experimenting with and pushing the limits of the comic book medium through the use of border-less panels, unrestricted text, and display of dramatic subject matters. Some of his most recognized graphic novels include: A Family Matter, Will Eisner's New York : life in the big city, To the Heart of the Storm, The Name of the Game, Dropsie Avenue: the neighborhood, among many others.

In 1988, the Eisner Awards was created. It is recognized as one of the most prestigious awards of the comic industry.

To celebrate the legacy of Will Eisner on his centennial anniversary, the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building currently has on exhibit on the third floor: The Spirit of Will Eisner: Celebrating a Graphic Novel Pioneer. Open until March 26th.

For additional resources on comics and graphic novels, click on the following links to research guides and blog posts:

• Comic Books
• Comics at NYPL: A Research Guide
• Blog Posts by Subject: Comics and Graphic Novels
• Rare Book Division comic book collection
• Guide to the Will Eisner Collection at The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum

To learn more about Will Eisner go to the Library's online Catalog and do either a Subject or Author search using the term: Eisner, Will.

 Welcome to our biweekly update on events happening during the next two weeks at The New York Public Library. With 92 locations across New York City, a lot is happening at the Library. We're highlighting some of our events here—including author talks, free classes, community art shows, performances, concerts, and exhibitions—and you can always find more at nypl.org/events. If you want our round-up in your inbox, sign up here. We look forward to seeing you at the Library. 

Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

Free Events

3/31: The Library After Hours: Women Marching Through History: Registration for Priority Access for the city's most cerebral happy hour opens tonight! In honor of Women’s History Month, the next Library After Hours will celebrate feminist thought and action since the 18th century.  Register now for Priority Access to skip the line and gain early entry to the event. Priority Access tickets are limited, so sign up to be notified when registration is available. Must be 21+ to attend and ID is required. 6:30 PM.

3/9: The Night Ocean: Paul La Farge and Lev Grossman: Conversations from the Cullman presents Cullman Center fellow Paul La Farge on his new novel, The Night Ocean—about a man who becomes obsessed with the horror-fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft, and then mysteriously disappears—with Lev Grossman, senior writer at Time magazine and the author of the Magicians trilogy. 7 PM.

3/14: Martin Duberman's Jews Queers Germans: A Novel: Martin Duberman and Alisa Solomon discuss Duberman's new historical novel, about the life of the gay European upper class during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II. 7 PM.

3/21: Changing the Literary Landscape: Writing and Publishing the Disabled Voice: Five leading disability-focused writers and publishers reflect on, argue about, and discuss the growing canon of literature around disability, and how and where it's being published. 6 PM.

LIVE from the NYPL

3/14: Robert Lepage with Paul Holdengraber: Theater of Memory: Iconic playwright and director Robert Lepage returns to BAM in 2017 to stage his tenth production there. 887 Murray Avenue, Quebec City, Canada, named after the apartment complex where Lepage spent his youth, comes to life as a bewitching, tech-saturated dollhouse in this deeply personal solo work. Lepage comes to the Library to discuss the play and his experience unearthing a life’s worth of memories. 7 PM.

The Schomburg Center

3/16: Dancing Through Barriers with Dance Theatre of Harlem: Dance Theatre of Harlem presents this educational demonstration on the art and science of dance, combining educational commentary and performance to teach the craft of ballet. 10:30 AM.

3/13, 3/20, 3/27: Women's Jazz Festival: The celebration of Ella Fitzgerald continues, with jazz performances from Terri Lyny Carrington and Les Nubians, as well as a talk about Fitzgerald's lasting impact on the jazz community. 7 PM.

3/7: Lapidus Center Presents: Enslaved Women and the Ethical Practice of History: Marisa J. Fuentes, author of Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive, takes us through the streets of 18th-century Bridgetown, Barbados in this historical talk. 6:30 PM.

Library for the Performing Arts

3/9: Patricia Bosworth's The Men In My Life: From Particia Bosworth, the acclaimed biographer of Diane Arbus, Marlon Brando, and Jane Fonda, comes a vivid confession about her journey into womanhood, defying repressive 1950's conventions while being shaped by the notable men in her life. 6 PM.

3/16: Inflections and Innuendos: A Persichetti Retrospective: Celebrate the Library's Vincent Persichetti archive with this retrospective concert, featuring Infanta Maria for viola and piano and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird for soprano and piano. 6 PM.

3/20: Dangerous Liaisons: The Library hosts a screening of this adaptation of Christopher Hampton's Olivier-winning and Tony-nominated play, featuring John Malkovich, Glenn Close and Michelle Pfeiffer. 6 PM.

Mid-Manhattan Library

3/8: Barney: Grove Press and Barney Rosset with Michael Rosenthal: Michael Rosenthal presents an illustrated lecture on publisher Barney Rosset, the head of Grove Press and an advocate against censorship. 6:30 PM.

3/15: The Arcades Project in New York: See Kenneth Goldsmith and David Kishik, who independently wrote books reimagining Walter Benjamin's unfinished masterpiece The Arcades Project, in conversation with one another, moderated by Eric Jarosinski. 6:30 PM.

Science, Industry and Business Library

3/8: Traditional Media Jobs vs. Social Media Jobs: What You Need To Know: Join Andy Limpus, the Director of Talent Acquisition at the global firm Penske Media Corporation, as he discusses the latest hiring trends for media companies. Learn what hiring managers are looking for, and the most desired skills in this job market. 6 PM.

3/9: Growing Your Home-Based Business: If you're a freelancer, or you operate a startup out of your residence, learn how to grow your business in this workshop presented by the IRS. 6 PM.

3/11: Emotions & Money: The Mind of the Market: This workshop on behavorial finance will offer smart tips on how to think about money and investing in order to achieve financial security. 12 PM.

Around the Library

3/13: What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear: Modern medicine is infatuated with high-tech gadgetry, yet the single most powerful diagnostic tool remains the doctor-patient conversation, which can uncover the lion’s share of illnesses. Dr. Danielle Ofri discusses how refocusing on conversations between doctors and patients can lead to better health, with WNYC host Mary Harris. 7:15 PM.

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More Events

Note: Visit nypl.org/events or call ahead for the latest information, as programs and hours are subject to change or cancellation.

Meet Dr. Ini Udoh, who immigrated to the United States as a young child, grew up in the Bronx amid poverty but near a welcoming branch library with a wealth of resources. She used the library as her study space through college before going away to medical school. Now a full-fledged doctor in the Bronx, Ini has come back to the "community that raised me."

Library Stories is a video series from The New York Public Library that shows what the Library means to our users, staff, donors, and communities through moving personal interviews.

Like, share, and watch more Library Stories on Facebook or YouTube.

For over a century, International Women's Day has been observed on March 8 — and this year, we've compiled 365 books by women authors from across the globe to keep the celebration going all year long.

This list includes a vast range of women authors, and we hope you find some old favorites and some new discoveries. And we hope that readers can draw strength and inspiration from these 365 books — and the women who wrote them — in the year ahead.

And if you've ever heard someone say they “just couldn't find” a great woman author to read, now you have not one, but 365 suggestions.

1. Leila Aboulela, The Kindness of Enemies

2. Susan Abulhawa, The Blue Between Sky and Water

3. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

4. Etel Adnan, Sea and Fog

5. Marjorie Agosín, A Cross and a Star

6. Ama Atta Aidoo, An Angry Letter in January and Other Poems

7. Naja Marie Aidt, Rock, Paper, Scissors

8. Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

9. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow

10. Elizabeth Alexander, The Light of the World

11. Svetlana Alexievich, Voices From Chernobyl

12. Clare Allan, Poppy Shakespeare

13. Sarah Addison Allen, Lost Lake

14. Isabel Allende, Eva Luna

15. Ruth Almog, Death in the Rain

16. Karin Altenberg, Island of Wings

17. Julia Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies

18. Tahmima Anam, The Good Muslim

19. Maya Angelou, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

20. Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, Being and Things On Their Own

21. Natacha Appanah, The Last Brother

22. Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment

23. Chloe Aridjis, Asunder

24. Bridget Asher, All of Us and Everything

25. Margaret Atwood, Oryx & Crake

26. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

27. Mona Awad, 13 Ways of Looking At a Fat Girl

28. Basma Abdel Aziz, The Line

29. Mariama Bâ, Scarlet Song

30. Annie Baker, The Flick

31. Toni Cade Bambara, Those Bones Are Not My Child

32. Sara Baume, Spill Simmer Falter Wither

33. Jo Ann Beard, The Boys of My Youth

34. Gioconda Belli, The Inhabited Woman

35. Karen Bender, Refund

36. Fatima Bhutto, The Shadow of the Crescent Moon

37. Imogen Binnie, Nevada

38. Elizabeth Bishop, Geography III

39. Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

40. Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers

41. Lluba Merlina Bortolani, The Siege

42. Carmen Boullosa, Before

43. Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

44. Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

45. Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters

46. Lauren Buekes, The Shining Girls

47. NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names

48. Octavia Butler, Kindred

49. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

50. Leonora Carrington, The hearing trumpet

51. Anne Carson, Nox

52. Ana Castillo, Black dove : mamá, mi'jo, and me

53. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee

54. Eileen Chang, Half a Lifelong Romance

55. Jade Chang, The Wangs vs. The World

56. Paulina Chiziane, The First Wife

57. Susan Choi, American Woman

58. Kate Chopin, The Awakening

59. Sonya Chung, Long for This World

60. Caryl Churchill, Top Girls

61. Sandra Cisneros, Loose Woman

62. Hélène Cixous, The Hélène Cixous Reader

63. Lucille Clifton, Mercy

64. Colette, Cheri

65. Lindsey Collen, The Rape of Sita

66. Simin Daneshvar, Sutra & Other Stories

67. Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions

68. Edwidge Danticat, Claire of the Sea Light

69. Meaghan Daum, Unspeakable

70. Lydia Davis, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

71. Dola de Jong, The Tree and the Vine

72. Grazia Deledda, After the Divorce

73. Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

74. Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day

75. Shashi Deshpande, Writing from the Margin and Other Essays

76. Marosa di Giorgio, Diadems: Selected Poems

77. Viola Di Grado, Hollow Heart

78. Emily Dickinson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson

79. Joan Didion, Democracy

80. Dolores Dorantes, Style

81. Rita Dove, On the Bus With Rosa Parks

82. Carol Ann Duffy, The Bees

83. Emiliya Dvoryanova, Concerto for sentence

84. Yasmine El Rashidi, Chronicle of a Last Summer

85. Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero

86. George Eliot, Middlemarch

87. Mona Eltahawy, Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution

88. Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

89. Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Textbook

90. Louise Erdrich, LaRose

91. Laura Esquivel, Pierced by the sun

92. Tarfia Faizullah, Seam

93. Athena Farrokhzad, White Blight

94. Melissa Febos, Abandon Me

95. Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

96. Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend

97. Rosario Ferré, Memoir

98. Anne Finger, Call Me Ahab

99. Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower

100. Melissa Fleming, A Hope More Powerful than the Sea: One Refugee's Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival

101. Leontia Flynn, Profit and Loss

102. Paula Fox, Desperate Characters

103. Lauren Francis-Sharma, Til the Well Runs Dry

104. Ru Freeman, On Sal Mal Lane

105. Rivka Galchen, Atmospheric Disturbances

106. Mary Gaitskill, The Mare

107. Petina Gappah, The Book of Memory

108. Elena Garro, First love ; &, Look for my obituary

109. Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist

110. Ruby Langford Ginibi, Haunted by the Past

111. Janine di Giovanni, The Morning They Came for Us

112. Patricia Glinton-Meicholas, A Shift In the Light

113. Angela Mangalang Gloria, The Complete Poems of Angela Mangalang Gloria

114. Louise Gluck, Faithful and Virtuous Night

115. Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist

116. Jorie Graham, Erosion

117. Linda LeGarde Grover, The dance boots

118. Paula Gunn Allen, America the Beautiful: Last Poems

119. Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

120. Fariba Hachtroudi, The Man Who Snapped His Fingers

121. Marilyn Hacker, Names

122. Katori Hall, The Mountaintop

123. Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Lonliness

124. Barbara Hammer, Hammer!

125. Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun

126. Githa Hariharan, Almost Home: Finding a Place in the World from Kashmir to New York

127. Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings

128. Eve Harris, The Marrying of Chani Kaufman

129. Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route

130. Shirley Hazzard, The Transit of Venus

131. Bessie Head, The Collector of Treasures

132. Amy Hempel, Reasons to Live

133. Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans

134. Christine Dwyer Hickey, The Cold Eye of Heaven

135. Akiko Higashimura, Princess Jellyfish

136. Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

137. Hilda Hilst, With My Dog Eyes

138. Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift

139. Alice Hoffman, Survival Lessons

140. Linda Hogan, Mean Spirit

141. Sara Sue Hoklotubbe, Deception on All Accounts

142. bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

143. Jodie Houser, Faith

144. Keri Hulme, The Bone People

145. Dương Thu Hương, Paradise of the Blind

146. Hồ Xuân Hương, Spring Essence

147. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

148. Ulfat Idilbi, Grandfather's Tale

149. Naomi Jackson, The Star Side of Bird Hill

150. Margo Jefferson, Negroland

151. Elfriede Jelinek, Women As Lovers

152. Gish Jen, Typical American

153. Amryl Johnson, Sequins For a Ragged Hem

154. June Jordan, Directed by Desire

155. Janine Joseph, Driving Without a License

156. Mieko Kanai, The Word Book

157. Han Kang, The Vegetarian

158. Ghada Karmi, Return: A Palestinian Memoir

159. Mary Karr, The Liar's Club

160. Kazue Kato, Blue Exorcist

161. Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey

162. Hiromi Kawakami, Manazuru

163. Porochista Khakpour, The Last Illusion

164. Ausma Zehanat Khan, The Unquiet Dead

165. Vénus Khoury-Ghata, A House at the Edge of Tears

166. Suki Kim, Without You, There Is No Us

167. Jamaica Kincaid, See Now Then

168. Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

169. Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior

170. Natsuo Kirino, Out

171. Katie Kitamura, Gone to the Forest

172. Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

173. Anna Kordzaia-Samadashvili, Me, Margarita

174. Sana Krasikov, One More Year

175. Megan Kruse, Call Me Home

176. Jean Kwok, Girl in Translation

177. Kang Kyong-ae, From Wonso Pond

178. Selma Lagerlöf, A Manor House Tale

179. Yanick Lahens, The Colour of Dawn

180. Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland

181. Laila Lalami, Secret Son

182. Nella Larsen, Passing

183. Jeanne Marie Laskas, Concussion

184. Radmila Lazic, A Wake for the Living

185. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

186. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Random Family

187. Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird

188. Jill Leovy, Ghettoside

189. Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems

190. Yiyun Li, Kinder Than Solitude

191. Rosa Liksom, Compartment No. 6

192. Adriana Lisboa, Crow Blue

193. Gloria Lisé, Departing at Dawn

194. Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star

195. Marjorie Liu, Monstress: Awakening

196. Inverna Lockpezer, Cuba: My Revolution

197. Joan London, The Golden Age

198. Audre Lorde, The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

199. Dulce Maria Loynaz, Absolute Solitude

200. Valeria Luiselli, Sidewalks

201. Fiona Maazel, Woke Up Lonely

202. Suah Mae, A Greater Music

203. Nguyen Phan Que Mai, The Secret of Hoa Sen

204. Janet Malcolm, Forty-one False Starts

205. Alia Mamdouh, The Loved Ones

206. Dacia Maraini, The Silent Duchess

207. Dawn Lundy Martin, Life In A Box Is A Pretty Life

208. Bobbie Ann Mason, Clear Springs

209. Ronit Matalon, The Sound of Our Steps

210. Ayana Mathis, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

211. Jane Mayer, Dark Money

212. Imbolo Mbue, Behold the Dreamers

213. Eimear McBride, A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing

214. Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

215. Charlotte McDonald-Gibson, Cast Away

216. Francesca Melandri, Eva Sleeps

217. Rigoberta Menchu, I, Rigoberta Menchu

218. Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs

219. Ai Mi, Under the Hawthorn Tree

220. Jung Mi-kyung, My Son's Girlfriend

221. Qiu Miaojin, Last Words From Monmartre

222. Amanda Michalopoulou, Why I Killed My Best Friend

223. Lydia Millet, Sweet Lamb of Heaven

224. Gabriela Mistral, Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral

225. Minae Mizumura, A True Novel

226. Nadifa Mohamed, Black Mamba Boy

227. Lorrie Moore, Bark

228. Marianne Moore, The Poems of Marianne Moore

229. Cherrie Moraga, Heroes and Saints & Other Plays

230. Nancy Morejón, Querencias/Homing Instincts

231. Toni Morrison, Sula

232. Scholastique Mukasonga, Cockroaches

233. Bharati Mukherjee, The Tree Bride

234. Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums

235. Alice Munro, Family Furnishings

236. Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head

237. Eileen Myles, School of Fish

238. Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

239. Maggie Nelson, Bluets

240. Guadalupe Nettel, Natural Histories

241. Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You

242. Hualing Nieh, Mulberry and Peach

243. Dorthe Nors, Karate Chop

244. Sara Nović, Girl at War

245. Alissa Nutting, Tampa

246. Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, I Do Not Come to You by Chance

247. Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water

248. Silvia Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces

249. Yoko Ogawa, Revenge

250. Nnedi Okorafor, Binti

251. Chinelo Okparanta, Happiness, Like Water

252. Sharon Olds, What Love Comes To

253. Yewande Omotoso, The Woman Next Door

254. Wendy C. Ortiz, Excavation

255. Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic

256. Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

257. Kaori Ozaki, The Gods Lie

258. Ruth Ozeki, All Over Creation

259. Cynthia Ozick, Foreign Bodies

260. ZZ Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

261. Grace Paley, The Little Disturbances of Man

262. Morgan Parker, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce

263. Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog

264. Shahrnush Parsipur, Kissing the Sword

265. Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

266. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

267. Anna Politkovskaya, A Russian Diary

268. Katha Pollitt, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights

269. Dorit Rabinyan, All the Rivers

270. Dawn Raffel, Carrying the Body

271. Claudia Rankine, Citizen

272. Laura Restrepo, Isle of Passion

273. Parisa Reza, The Gardens of Consolation

274. Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

275. Adrienne Rich, Collected Poems, 1950-2012

276. Alifa Rifaat, Distant View of a Minaret and Others Stories

277. Suzanne Rivecca, Death Is Not An Option

278. Riverbend, Baghdad Burning

279. Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Hiroshima in the Morning

280. Merce Rodoreda, The Time of the Doves

281. Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

282. Vedrana Rudan, Night

283. Mary Ruefle, The Most of It

284. Dale Russakoff, The Prize

285. Nelly Sachs, Glowing Enigmas

286. Elif Şafak, Ask

287. Trish Salah, Wanting in Arabic

288. Sonia Sanchez, Does Your House Have Lions?

289. Sappho, The Complete Works of Sappho

290. Noo Saro-Wiwa, Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria

291. Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis

292. Åsne Seierstad, The Angel of Grozny

293. Shanthi Sekaran, Lucky Boy

294. Julia Serano, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive

295. Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton

296. Sonia Shah, Pandemic: Tracking Contagions from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond

297. Kamila Shamsie, Kartography

298. Ntozake Shange, Freedom's A-Calling Me

299. Solmaz Sharif, Look

300. Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji

301. Kyung-sook Shin, Please Look After Mom

302. Sun Yung Shin, Unbearable Splendor

303. Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book

304. Ana Maria Shuah, The Weight of Temptation

305. Bapsi Sidhwa, Ice-Candy Man

306. Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead

307. Zadie Smith, Swing Time

308. Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars

309. Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

310. Marivi Soliven, The Mango Bride

311. Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

312. Susan Sontag, Styles of Radical Will

313. Ahdaf Soueif, The Map of Love

314. Gertrude Stein, Fernhurst, Q.E.D., and other early writings

315. Ruth Stone, What Love Comes To

316. Aoibbhean Sweeney, Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking

317. Mary Szybist, Incarnadine

318. Wislawa Szymborska, Monologue of a Dog

319. Elizabeth Crane, When the Messenger Is Hot

320. Amy Tan, The Valley of Amazement

321. Yoko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear

322. Valerie Taylor, The Girls in 3-B

323. Teffi, Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea

324. Lygia Fagunda Telles, The Girl in the Photograph

325. Ece Temelkuran, Book of the Edge

326. Lynne Tillman, No Lease on Life

327. Taeko Tomioka, Building Waves

328. Tereska Torres, By Cecile

329. Monique Truong, The Book of Salt

330. Marina Tsvetaeva, Moscow in the Plague Year

331. Magdalena Tulli, In Red

332. Dubravka Ugresic, Thank You For Not Reading

333. Sigrid Undset, Gunnar's Daughter

334. Chika Unigwe, On Black Sisters Street

335. Kirstin Valdez Quade, Night at the Fiestas

336. Jean Valentine, Little Boat

337. Lara Vapnyar, There Are Jews in My House

338. Marja-Liisa Vartio, The Parson's Widow

339. Josefina Vicens, The Empty Book

340. Alice Walker, The Color Purple

341. Park Wan-suh, Lonesome You

342. Jesmyn Ward, Men We Reaped

343. Sarah Waters, Fingersmith

344. Shannon Watters, Lumberjanes

345. Laurie Weeks, Zipper Mouth

346. Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter

347. Phyllis Wheatley, The Poetry of Phyllis Wheatley

348. Zoe Wicomb, You Can't Get Lost In Cape Town

349. Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege

350. G. Willow Wilson, Ms. Marvel

351. Charlotte Wood, The Natural Way of Things

352. Virginia Woolf, Orlando

353. Alexis Wright, Carpentaria

354. Sarah E. Wright, This Child's Gonna Live

355. Sylvia Wynter, The Hills of Hebron

356. Xuē Xīnrán, The Good Women of China

357. Can Xue, The Last Lover

358. Tiphanie Yanique, Land of Love and Drowning

359. Samar Yazbek, Cinnamon

360. Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

361. Monica Youn, Barter

362. Kang Young-sook, Rina

363. Hsia Yu, Salsa

364. Jessica Zafra, Twisted

365. Haifa Zangana, Dreaming of Baghdad

(List compiled by Gwen Glazer, Sara Beth Joren, Lynn Lobash, Tracy O'Neill, and Nicholas Parker. )

Did we miss your favorite book written by a woman? Let us know in the comments.

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Have trouble reading standard print? Many of these titles are available in formats for patrons with print disabilities.

Staff picks are chosen by NYPL staff members and are not intended to be comprehensive lists. We'd love to hear your ideas too, so leave a comment and tell us what you’d recommend. And check out our Staff Picks browse tool for more recommendations!

Live from the Reading Room: Correspondence is a podcast series that aims to share interesting and engaging letters written by or to key historical figures from the African Diaspora. 

Each episode highlights a letter from popular collections housed in the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.

This episode features a letter from educator, writer, actor,  director, and Civil Rights activist, Julian Mayfield, to his dear friends, the dynamic actors, writers, playrights, poets, and Civil Rights activists, Ruby Dee, and Ossie Davis.

 

This correspondence is recited by Linden Anderson, Library Technical Assistant III, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.

Dr. Deborah Willis is a pioneer in the field of photography. Her first book, Black Photographers, 1840–1940 : An Illustrated Bio-Bibliography, has inspired the work of countless photographers, scholars, and writers.  The genius of her work has been recognized in the form of both MacArthur Foundation and Guggenheim Fellowships, and countless awards. In this interview, Dr. Willis discusses the BLACK PORTRAITURE[S] III: Reinventions: Strains of Histories and Cultures conference, her photography work, and her pioneering work as curator of Photographs and Prints at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Alexsandra Mitchell: Can you tell us a bit about the Black Portraitures conferences and what inspired the creation of the conference series?  

Deborah Willis: Black Portraiture[s] III: Reinventions, Strains of Histories and Cultures was held in Johannesburg for three days at Turbine Hall last November. The conference was part of a series of conversations begun in 2004 at the DuBois Institute at Harvard University focusing on imaging the black body in art, history, writing and film. I worked closely with professors Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Cheryl Finley (Cornell), Manthia Diawara (New York University), and Thelma Golden (Executive Director of  the Studio Museum in Harlem) in planning and setting up the first event. The conference grew over the years and provided a forum for artists, activists, and scholars from around the world to share ideas about the state of African, African Diaspora and African American art, history, and art history. In 2004, the DuBois Research Institute hosted "Bridging the Gaps: First Annual Conference on African American Art." In 2007, I worked closely with my colleague, Awam Ampka, New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts, and the others in organizing the second one, and later with Professor Leslie King Hammond in Baltimore, where it was held at the Maryland Institute College of Art’s Center for Race and Culture. After moving the conference back to NYU, I co-organized the Beauty and Fashion conference.  At each conference, attendees got a closer look at African, African- American and black art experiences in diverse ways.  And in 2013, we held "Black Portraitures: The Black Body in the West" at the Musee Quai Branly, Ecole des Beaux Art Paris in Paris. In 2015, "Black Portraitures II: Imaging the Black Body and Restaging Histories" was held at NYU’s Villa La Pietra in Florence and, after overwhelming demand, it was brought to NYU Washington Square’s campus earlier last year for "Black Portraitures: Revisited."

AM: How does your experience as former curator of the Schomburg’s Photographs and Prints Division influence the work you do both at New York University and with the conferences?

DW: The photograph for me is an instrument of memory, and explores the value of self, family and memory in documenting everyday life. I use this concept of loving family as a form of activism. As a photographer, educator and curator, I have used photography to retell stories about family life and explore memories.  When I became aware of the photograph as an important storytelling device, I was a young girl growing up in North Philadelphia. My personal experience with photography has many dimensions. In my artwork, I attempt to relive family memories by incorporating old photographs with contemporary images I made while exploring the nuances of those memories. In photographing my family, I found a way of entering the past and commenting on societal issues that I believe helped to shape my interest in visual culture. My career has been divided into two distinct areas—studio art and art history. My academic writing has addressed critical questions in the broad areas of photographic history, visual culture, African-American art, iconicity, popular and material culture. Within these fields, I have consistently focused my research on themes such as body politics, race and gender, photography and the politics of visual culture. I selected these topics because they involve central questions of visual theory and art history practices. For example, as a curator at the Schomburg Center in the 1980s and 1990s, I noticed that there was no text offering a critical discussion of the photograph referencing the black subject or the maker of the photograph, who is African-American. I met with researchers working on projects about black experiences in the U.S. and abroad.  As a curator at the Smithsonian’s National African American Museum Project, and later as professor at NYU, my central questions broadened as I began to think critically about this gap in history, and later produced books and published articles addressing images on black culture. I used the collections at the Schomburg Center as a central focus in my writing on the subject of photography. In my work, I looked at how photographs have been used by photographers who've looked at the black family, how families and the general public preserve and use images of black people, the implications of stereotyping, and what assumptions are made of images of women. My first book, Black Photographers: A Bio-Bibliography 1840–1940, was the follow-up to an undergraduate paper on black photographers. In the 1970s, while a student at the Philadelphia College of Art, I visited the Schomburg Center to research that paper and met Jean Blackwell Hutson, at that time the head of the Schomburg and one of the most significant workers there. Ernest Kaiser, who was in the midst of creating an index to articles on black life, along with Hutson pointed me in right direction for that research as a young student. In 1980, after receiving my MFA in Photography from Pratt Institute, I was hired by Assistant Director Ruth Ann Stewart as the Prints and Photographs Specialist.

AM: What were some of your favorite collection acquisitions during your time as curator, and do they impact your current work as an international Africana scholar?

DW: The highlight of my life at that time was to have the opportunity to work at the Schomburg Center. I met famed Harlem photographer, James VanDerZee, and was able to identify some of the photographs that were already in the collection; photographers like him and others who worked in the 1840s and 1850s, such as James Presley Ball. I was also able to catalog and identify these works and other photographers working in the 1900s to the 1940s; including C. M. Battey, Addison Scurlock, Robert McNeill, Morgan and Marvin Smith, Gordon Parks. And in the 1950s and 60s; Moneta Sleet, Jr., Charles “Chuck” Stewart’s photographs of jazz musicians and vocalists, and Bert Andrews photographs of black theater on and off Broadway, which opened up a new way of considering programming for the Schomburg. It added to and shaped the performing arts collections.

My favorite acquisitions included meeting twin brothers Morgan and Marvin Smith, and helping to box, acquire, and catalog their photographs. I was awestruck when the two walked into my office, led by Hutson, because I searched for them in my paper. Other highlights were Charles “Teenie” Harris (Pittsburgh); Austin Hansen (Harlem and the Virgin Islands); the Fredi Washington and Ada “Bricktop” Smith’s photograph collections of significant women who enjoyed their lives on stage and in Paris. Meeting Fredi Washington, as well as dancers Honi Coles and Cholly Atkins, was a pure joy. I recall how excited I was to hear Washington's stories about her life as an actress working with Paul Robeson. Delilah Jackson helped me to identify photograph collections that were at risks of being lost and/or destroyed. All of the photographers became key people in my life throughout my career—from curating to teaching. I also contacted my contemporaries working in photography who were instrumental in acquiring a few of their works, including Carrie Mae Weems, Dawoud Bey, Jeffrey Scales among others. In processing the Gordon Parks photographs, which had been placed in the stacks on top of a high dusty cabinet, I discovered his FSA photographs and OWI photographs that he made in Harlem and D.C. It was a thrill to place the photos in acid free boxes and place the photographs in Mylar. As an international scholar, all of these experiences transformed my life and my thinking of how critical photographs are as a primary record. In the early 1990s, while searching for photographic images of black women at the Schomburg, I met photographer and writer Carla Williams (she was a graduate student at the University of New Mexico then). We decided to collaborate on our research efforts, and in 2002 we co-authored and published The Black Female Body: A Photographic History. The book included 200 images that spanned three centuries and continents.

AM: What are some of the archival influences and innovations you've seen at BPIII?

DW: I loved reading all of the proposals submitted and a good number of panels and speakers focused on the concept of the archive in art, exhibitions, and libraries across the world. For example, Anna Arabindan-Kesson’s (Princeton University) paper examined the role of Indian photographers in the creation of African photographic archives, to further our understanding of the factors shaping colonial entanglements and visual production in late nineteenth-century South Africa and Zanzibar. Temi Odumosu's (Malmö University, Sweden) "Traces of Congo in the Nordic Colonial Archive" presented an amazing paper on how archival materials represent Nordic engagements in West Central Africa. Zanele Muhole was the key speaker on "Reimagining the Archive Through a Queer Lens." Your presentation, "Live from the Reading Room: The African Influence,” on the "Re-Imagining the Archive" panel, enlivened the discussions on the topic. Other panel titles that created a new way of considering the archive include; “Pan African Futures: Exploring Race as Technology;” “Afrofuturism as Methodology,” “From South Africa to South Carolina: Postwar Music and Black Spaces;” “#BlackLivesMatter: Interrogating Representations of Black Bodies in Pain and Black Lives Without History,” “What’s Wrong With This Picture? Conflicted Circuits of Dispersal, Desire, and Return in Exquisite Portraiture,” "Venus’ on My Back: Girls of Color, Inheritance, and the Hottentot Venus Narrative,” and "Black Power @ 50 Conversations Part II: Image as Protest On The Media: Representing African Photography Today," as well as the personal reflections by some artists and photographers such as Marilyn Nance, who discussed her work at Festac and other portraits of artists. 

AM: The Schomburg Center has a longstanding commitment to not only preserve and collect materials from the African Diaspora, but to be active in various scholarly and artistic communities throughout the diaspora. How did the conference organizers select Johannesburg as the cite for this iteration of the conference?

DW: The location in South Africa was historic and had contemporary significance because the conference participants addressed topics such as the 40th anniversary of the Soweto Uprisings, the Rhodes Must Fall and Black Lives Matter protests, and the state of contemporary art practice in South Africa 20 years after the end of apartheid. Johannesburg was the site of the first biennial of contemporary art in South Africa in 1995, one year following the democratic election of Nelson Mandela as president. Its vibrant arts scene was significant, with important private and state funded galleries and museums, as well as universities that teach studio art, theory and criticism classes. It was also important because it was an opportunity to honor and acknowledge the contributions of the American Ambassador to South Africa, Ambassador Patrick Gaspard, and to invite renowned artist and art historian, Dr. David C. Driskell, to deliver a keynote address. He shared his experiences about his time in South Africa as an artist and curator in the 1970s.

The decision to organize this historic conference in Johannesburg also grew out of our early interests in South African photographers, such as Ernest Cole, Peter Magubane, and George Hallett. These photographers transformed our understanding of living under apartheid while reading Drum magazine and listening to the music of Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela. The opportunity to discuss social protest movements in America and in South Africa through the works of Santu Mofokeng or Gavin Jantjes, to look at the art of women creating work about the black body, such as Tracey Rose and Zanele Muholi, and to look at how new media has been used to tell new stories was essential to us.

AM: Bayete Ross Smith mentioned to me that his work is heavily influenced by his time as a child when he and your son, Hank Willis Thomas, would come here after school to see you during your time as curator. Do you think your work here has had a influence on Hank and his recent show in conjunction with the conference, "In Context: Africans In America," at the Goodman Gallery and The Johannesburg Art Gallery?

DW: Yes. Hank and Bayete spent hours in the Schomburg attending exhibition openings and public programs I curated and organized. It was their after school activity when I had to work late, and it was fascinating to see them ask questions about the photographs and play with their toys while listening in the back of the room to the speakers. I believe all the speakers’ words penetrated in some way that helped to shape their work today.  They had their own live streaming early on in their young lives. Interestingly, they did not complain. When I attend their lectures today, it is encouraging to listen to them acknowledge their Schomburg days. It was always an adventure because they met a celebrity or two each time. They also learned photography as Boy Scouts. I set up my kitchen and bathroom as developing and printing rooms for them when they were pre teens for a few of their members. In regards to the exhibition, the conference coincided with the 50th anniversary of the pioneering Goodman Gallery, where the exhibition, "Africa America," featured works of some of the world’s most sought after African, African-American and African Diaspora artists. Liza Essers and Hank curated it.

AM: Is there anything else that you would like to share with our readers?

DW: I would like to close this interview by sharing with you that having the opportunity to work with Ellis Haizlip (aka Mr. Soul) was a defining moment in my career as a researcher, curator, and programmer. Ellis, like Robin Kelley, understood love and the importance of preserving the archival record of the voices and visionaries that changed America and the black diaspora. I have such love for the work at the Schomburg and what all of you are doing to open the doors to the next generation.

In 2014, the Archives Unit at The New York Public Library began its evaluation of ArchivesSpace. Following a rigorous review of the application, we began implementation in earnest in 2016, and started using it in production earlier this year. Historically, Special Collections developed its own systems for collection/data management, which could be developed and tailored to suit our needs. As such, moving from a homegrown data management system/model to a community-designed one represented a major shift in how the Library evaluates and implements systems. Instead of being able to build to our wants/needs from the ground up, ArchivesSpace required us to meet the application halfway in its assumptions and practices.

When assessing and implementing ArchivesSpace, we used these questions as guidelines:

•     How can we adapt the tool to meet our existing descriptive practices?
•     How ought we adapt our local practices to meet ArchivesSpace’s expectations?
•     How can we modify the application to expedite minimal processing?
•     How can we integrate ArchivesSpace into our metadata ecosystem?

This post will focus on the first two questions regarding modifications to both ArchivesSpace’s and NYPL’s data models/policies; a follow-up will explore processing changes and integrations.

Adapting ArchivesSpace for Description

ArchivesSpace was developed as the successor to the Archivist’s Toolkit, which was designed in the early 2000s by a consortium of university archives. In contrast, NYPL’s descriptive model evolved internally, and was codified in a locally-developed FileMaker database. As such, the data models instituted in ArchivesSpace and within Special Collections did not align when we began evaluating ArchivesSpace. For example, ArchivesSpace’s EAD XML output takes advantage of little-used attributes such as altrender to store descriptively meaningful data, regardless of the attribute’s intended application. On the other hand, NYPL’s EAD XML is very semantically strict; fields and attributes are applied only if we can put them to their intended documented use.

Furthermore, many practices developed at NYPL had no congruent modeling in ArchivesSpace. In order to accommodate NYPL’s multidivisional descriptive practices, we apply multiple identifiers to collections. This ensures that references to materials stay present even as it moves through different descriptive environments (e.g. a collection with a Dance catalog record getting a finding aid via Special Collections). ArchivesSpace does not handle this use case out-of-the-box, instead only allowing up to one identifier to be applied to a collection/component at a time. 

When approaching these issues, our guiding principle was “how can we make the system work for us?” Our existing descriptive practices had been in place for years, and we built our processes/systems around them. As such, we were not interested in implementing entirely new descriptive models and warping our workflows and infrastructure around them. We decided to develop plugins for ArchivesSpace (code that overrides existing functionality to modify/create behavior) that would extend/modify its data models to meet our local practices. Primarily, this involved modifying ArchivesSpace’s EAD output to match the standard that we developed, and extending its data model to support multiple identifiers for collections/components. We were able to accomplish both, thus laying the semantic groundwork for metadata creation/management in ArchivesSpace.

Adapting Policies to ArchivesSpace

Implementing ArchivesSpace provided us the opportunity to reevaluate our existing descriptive practices. Our local descriptive systems evolved over time, and did not necessarily develop in line with the practices established elsewhere in the archival community. As above, many of ArchivesSpace’s assumptions about description and practice needed to be altered to meet our local needs. However, we also used the opportunity to explore how we could adapt our practices and policies to ArchivesSpace, and how it could improve our processing and data management.

For example, we reevaluted how we manage controlled headings as part of our implementation. Historically, our descriptive systems have treated authorized headings as metadata attached to a collection/item, instead of using an entity-based model. This had ramifications on data management and processing workflows, as headings could not be centrally controlled. As we lacked a centralized authorities resource, managing a local archival name authority was out of the question.

In contrast, ArchivesSpace uses an entity-based authorities model out-of-the-box. This transformation from treating authorities as strings to things required a rethinking of how we create and manage authorities in Special Collections. We developed new policies around creating headings from existing authorities, which now includes providing URIs for names and subjects. ArchivesSpace’s entity-based model also provides the ability to establish locally-generated names as authorized headings (provided that they meet an established standard); we hope to turn these headings into the first-ever local NYPL archival name authority.

In addition to developing policies and practices around the newly-possible, we created a local manual for our instance of ArchivesSpace. This manual serves the dual purpose of providing guidance on using the application and documenting best practices for creating and managing archival descriptions. As policies develop, we will update the manual to reflect the latest developments in ArchivesSpace.