Following this year’s Thanksgiving season, I want to thank the Wilson Library for being my favorite place at the University of Minnesota.
When we want to pray, we go to the church, mosque, synagogue, tumble or a room designated for prayer. When we want to dance, we go to clubs, or, for those with a wild spirit, on the street. When we want to engage in scholarship, we go to the most sanctuary place on earth: the library. In an era where books are banned and authors are threatened, I’ll reflect on how the library has played a significant role in my life.
I used to hate the library and avoided it like the plague. I even resented library goers, seeing them as nerds who possessed no social skills whatsoever and as people with whom I would never hang out. Even worse, I saw the library as a place of first-rate boredom. Reading books in the library was never on my agenda. But all of that has changed.
When I was in high school in Yemen, I decided to take my school seriously because I did not want to live there anymore. The war was destroying everything, and I needed to get the hell out of the country. It was in the last year of high school that I became a devout library goer, reading and studying to secure a competitive scholarship to pursue higher education abroad. There were limited seats for students to secure a fully-funded scholarship. The competition was fierce.
I grew up in a house of books, though that upbringing did not have any influence on my reading habits. My father was an avid and voracious reader. He had his own library in our house, where he would read books with extreme regularity. He was a devout man. Although he was trying to seduce me to read, I never committed to reading. But the war forced me to invest in books. I couldn’t go outside to play, so I had to find books that would intrigue my fickle attention. I soon became like my father, conscripting myself to the library.
Partly due to time spent in the library and partly due to luck, I secured a scholarship to pursue my higher education in the United States. Ever since, I continued my library-going tradition. I often say I have a reading disorder, for which I blame the library. I also welcome anyone who feeds into my addiction by recommending must-read books. Readers go about reading for different purposes. I read to learn and unlearn. I do not have the luxury to read for mere pleasure. I often find myself facing problems in my own life, and I read books to solve those problems.
Although I used to read books and articles online, I recently shifted to the old-school approach, where I request books from the library to conduct my research. What I discovered may sound simple, profound or both: reading physical books have a particular feeling, unattained by reading on screen. There is something about the shape of the book and the dignity of the place that conspire to make for a transfixing reading experience. It is all pure psychological effects because knowledge is the same, whether reading online or in the library.
Since I hail from the precarious country of Yemen, where libraries are bombed, I have found the library a privilege in disguise. It is a place where I can meet the great minds of the past and learn from them. Without the library, I would not be at the University of Minnesota pursuing my doctorate degree. Many people like me do not even enter college, let alone graduate from one. Most of my friends are high school dropouts, who are now swamped by the Yemen crisis. I was lucky to leave, and the library has been central to that development.
Heartfelt thanks to all libraries the world over.
Abdulrahman Bindamnan is a PhD student as an Interdisciplinary Scholar for Global Social Change at the University of Minnesota. He achieved an MSEd from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and a BA from the University of Miami.
