A library where you can meet the “others”

In 2000, a very original place was created in Copenhagen : the Mennesketbibliotheke, literally the " human library ". It looks like an ordinary library with librarians, shelves, computers and filing cabinets. Inside, however, books are not borrowed , but the life experiences of those who are willing to dialogue with the "reader" . The latter thus has the possibility of immersing himself in a “ living book ”, meeting real women and men for a thirty-minute conversation. For the choice it must refer to titles which are the labels that society usually tends to attach to people felt as different, strangers: "The homeless", "The nudist", "The Islamic woman", "The lesbian". Purpose of the project it is overcoming the prejudices that society has towards certain human categories.In fact, the library wants to push its "users" out of their comfort zone , leading them to encounter diversity and to overcome distrust, xenophobia, racism and homophobia.

Taking a cue from the Danish reality, which today has offices (which can also be consulted on the Internet) in over eighty countries, the writer Valentina Giuliani has created a series of stories in which she imagines talking to individuals "labelled" according to the most classic stereotypes . The collection entitled " The human library " (Armando Dadò Editore, 2022, pp. 126) was born in which it is fascinating to extricate oneself from a multitude of intimate, touching, pedagogical and even poetic human events .

So let's ask Valentina Giuliani what struck her so much about the Copenhagen library as to make it a source of inspiration for her stories:

«In the human library I saw the possibility of touching important themes of our daily life in an original way, using different linguistic styles and registers, ranging between several literary genres: from the letter to rap, from poetry to prose, from monologue to dialogue. All to give voice to a complex humanity, not reducible to labels, such as those deliberately represented by the titles of the seventeen stories".

Your book is part of a literary and educational project that you have been carrying out for years. Do you want to talk about it?

"Of course. Although we have been talking about the human library for more than twenty years – the Mennesketbibliotheke in Copenhagen was created in 2000 following a serious episode of racist violence – I only recently discovered this institution for a citizenship education project conducted in the school where I teach . The human library has become a literary project as well as an educational one in a broad sense, one of civil commitment and engagement. Together with Il Museo degli amori perduti (published in 2021) and TranSiti (out next year for Armando Dadò) it is part of a trilogy of short stories whose frame is a real place, reworked and revisited. The first book deals with the Museum of broken relationships in Zagreb and its finished love stories, evoked through symbolic objects, illustrated by the artist Barbara Fässler. TranSiti is inspired by a train, the ArTransit, in transit from Milan to Zurich on 15 November 2014. The stories move along the line of an imaginary journey: landscapes and fast passages fixed in photographs and texts, between memories, emotions and experiences ordinary and extraordinary".

How did the stories in your latest book come about?

«Some texts are partly autobiographical and are based on real life experiences, others are testimonies gathered from informal interviews, still others are the result of creativity and imagination. I think the most successful ones are the stories in which the epilogue is unexpected and completely revolutionizes the expectations generated by the title. A process that simulates and interprets the unveiling of the other in face-to-face meetings with the original human library».

Don't we risk being saturated with issues such as inclusiveness and equality?

«In my library the theme is not equality or inclusiveness. The focus is an approach to others free from preconceptions and prejudices that limit our ability to know the world. And from this point of view, enough will never be done, if we keep faith with what Einstein said: 'It is easier to break an atom than a prejudice'.

Is there a story that seems particularly suited to the spirit of the times we live in?

«A funny story, which exposes our complex relationship with technology, is The nerd. But it is the set of stories, which become a single, great collective story, that gives us back the many faces of a bizarre and restless time which is ours».