The Seen Library Bookstand - No. 2

Seeing a 50 person line to buy books. Spending the past few months with my mom writing clues and wrapping books and having her in the bookstand tying bows and chatting with guests, watching the books we poured love into leave with their new owners as gifts or as a new story for them to read. Looking over at someone wiping away a tear as she reads a quote that she related to. Learning that someone flew from Houston, Texas to come to the pop up and another drove hours from the central coast. Seeing family and friends — old and new — coming time and time again to show support and encouragement. Catching my husband explain Seen Library to passerbys while restocking shelves and helping people find the perfect book for their grandma or their best friend or their 16-year-old cousin. Finding out that people were chatting in line with one another while they waited, asking each other which books they picked out. Hearing from those who have gone to Seen Library events how much it’s meant to them, how much of a safe space it’s been to self-reflect, make new friends and discover new perspectives. Being told “thank you for including these kinds of stories.”

I just can’t express enough how thankful I am for all the incredible, kind, open people who support and come into contact with this space, who make it what it is. I often can’t believe I get to share what I love with so many people and that so many people want to be a part of it, too. I don’t know what else to say except thank you to everyone who came to the bookstand to show support or to purchase a book — and to the people in my life who understood Seen Library even when I didn’t understand it myself, who encouraged me to lean into it and keep it going and to Platform for believing in it and making the space (again!) for something like this. Thank you thank you thank you.

See more here.

Some of the books shared:

—The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

—Salt Houses by Hala Alyan

—The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee

—There There by Tommy Orange

—On Connection by Kae Tempest

—Yellowface by RF Kuang

—I’m Afraid of Men by Vivek Shraya

Thank you for helping support Doctors without Borders. A portion of proceeds from the pop up was donated to this independent and impartial medical humanitarian organization providing medical care with empathy and compassion, supporting a health system that urgently lacks both medical personnel and supplies, offering reconstructive surgery and comprehensive care for people suffering from burns and trauma as well as urgent humanitarian and medical aid amid Israel’s ongoing siege and bombardment.