To Arrange Life among Books

Images are used with permission, courtesy of PNLS (Programa Nacional de Salas de Lectura)

"We do not promote reading: we arrange life,” says the philosopher, editor and secretary of the national Reading Plan of Brazil, José Castilho. A phrase like this clarifies so many of life’s complications, and provides inspiration in its subtle profundity. For over fifteen years, in several venues, I’ve met hundreds of volunteer reading mediators, with whom I shared bread, salt, and books. We have arranged our lives around reading.

One of my fondest experiences was directing México’s National Reading Rooms Program in Mexico, which is already in its eighteenth year. In these pages I would like to present an overview of what I learned from the generosity of the volunteer mediators reading program, because I think it is essential to recognize and share their experiences.

The National Reading Rooms Program was created to offer adult readers an alternative space that could allow them to continue reading outside formal literacy institutions, like the school library. But as time went by, children began to inhabit the Reading Rooms, not only as users, but also as reading mediators. Such is the case of Karen Ceballos, a girl from the mountains of Oaxaca, who decided one day to read to her friends and neighbors the beautiful books from the local Reading Room, gathered by its attendant, Eliz Olivella.

Yet the Reading Room program is not confined to traditional space, by the example of a child in the cancer ward at Queretaro’s hospital in his desire to be read Duck, Death and the Tulip by Wolf Erlbruch. He knew his own story was encrypted in this book, and in those pages he found the words that helped him translate his last days of life into a language of hope. Another example comes from the children of prisoners from a jail in Campeche, who asked their parents to request more children’s books on prison for the local Reading Room. We were initially surprised by those requests, but then we realized that children and parents were able to find and recognize each other, and speak about the stories they read together during the brief time they were allowed to share. Children were often allowed to borrow the books and return happily to tell their parents about how the story continued.

Recent years have been critical for children in México, as traditional institutions that have supported Mexican society have been brutally transformed. Now more than ever, violence unleashed by the war on drugs has not only compromised the physical integrity of thousands of families, but has also weakened and often broken community ties. In this country, where criminal groups have imposed false checkpoints and curfews on our citizens, volunteer reading mediators armed only with books from the Reading Room have given meaning and viability towards a life free of these constraints. I know this from Marisol Lizár-raga, a teacher from La Noria, Sinaloa. Although she could have left the town besieged by criminals, she decided to stay and build a community museum. She opened a Reading Room where she began to teach children to paint, to share readings, and to discuss their concerns. The quote below is part of her experience, told to the local newspaper, Sin embargo (http://www.sinembargo.mx/25-02-2013/535362):

Students gather and invent their own stories. They have to set their imagination free, for that’s what it means to be a child. Lupita, a 13 years old girl, is up to create a script for her group and she comes up with a plot that deals with the search for a missing person in a near forest. Lupita has two brothers, who also attend the workshop, Juan David and Carlos Enrique. Their father had been missing for more than a year. He is a traditional carpenter in La Noria, who left to a nearby town to do a job and has not returned yet. Now he is considered a missing person.

What do reading mediators actually...