By Paul Bolster
Hannah Bruce, the new librarian at the East Atlanta branch
The East Atlanta Library welcomes its new librarian, Hannah Bruce. She “grew up in libraries,” Bruce said. When she was a kid, she asked her parents to drive to the library twice a month so she could check out new books. It took a while to get back to her country home and usually by then she had read them all. While in high school in Dalton, Georgia she volunteered to shelve books two hours a week and after college at the University of North Georgia, Bruce got her first paid job at the local library. She now has a Master of Science in library science from Valdosta State University, and it looks like libraries are permanently in her blood.
Bruce has only been at the branch for a month and is still getting to know the community. So far, she loves the diversity of people and backgrounds and celebrates the diversity of art and music. “I can already see it’s a very creative place.”
The library is Bruce’s “third space.” By that she means it is a community space where you can meet friends and not have to “buy anything” in order to use what it has to offer. “The days of the quiet library are over,” she said, however you can find some quiet in one of its several small meeting rooms. “You go to the library to be with books but also to be with people.”
The branch has a modest space for books so they may not have the one you want at the branch, but they can find it in the system, in the state, or even outside the state if it takes and notify you of its arrival at the East Atlanta branch.
This summer Bruce hopes young people come to the library to prevent the “summer slump” while school is out. Summer story time will be offered for different ages occasionally with a craft involved to get the fingers moving creatively. “Summer Read” is a focus for all 34 libraries in the Fulton County Library System, with special guest appearances from The Science Guy and a magician this summer.
Bruce had to think a bit before she answered the New York Times Book Review question: Who would you invite to dinner if you could invite anyone? Her answer: Bell Hooks, born Gloria Jean Watkins. That answer sent me looking for more information on a writer I did not know. Hooks was an African American Appalachian writer, critic, poet, and scholar responsible for 40 books. She ended a distinguished university teaching career by founding a book series at Berea College in Kentucky.
Here is what Wikipedia said: “Her work explored the intersection of race, gender, and what she described as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination. Her work served as foundational to the modern idea of intersectionality.” [Wow! And I had to look her up.] One of her books Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place is not to be confused in title or content with Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. Hooks’ provocative views on education can be found in Teaching Transgression: Education and the Practice of Freedom.
