Let NEW MASCULINTIES shine!

Every Monday morning we hold a staff meeting to go over the events of the week past and the upcoming programs and events.  We review the individual progress or difficulties of our young library patrons.  Pedro´s learning difficulties usually come up. He's been coming for years, during this time he overcame his speech impediments, shyness and  violent reactions, but still cannot read fluidly.  Pedro, who has always been tiny for his age group, was 5 when his father -a huge strong man with many tattoos and a heavy medallion on his chest- brought him atop his noisy motorcycle.  After explaining to the parent that this wasn´t a school, that Pedro needed to come and leave whenever he wished and that we would only have a relationship with Pedro, the father reluctantly left and the little boy timidly walked into the Library, dragging a blink blink medallion pending on a heavy man necklace, just like the one his father was wearing.  

We work in a place and culture where men expect their sons to replicate their gestures, words and attitude, therefore Pedro was his father´s mini me.  Whenever Pedro´s name comes up during our weekly meetings, I recall this first image of Pedrito dragging -literally and metaphorically- the patriarchal mandate. 

Growing up as a boy, in the midst of a strong patriarchal culture, is full of danger and risk. Boys are twice more liable to be beaten by their parents than their sisters; the childhood of boys is cut short because boys are expected to leave school early to help the family income. From an early age, young boys imitate the men they see around them, they can't risk admitting vulnerability, weakness, their sensibility is suffocated from an early age.  That is why our liberating Library is a safe place, where Pedrito and others like him come and “play with the books”, learn English, do their homework and hang out with friends for sports and arts activities.  Every individual process is considered and respected.  Pedrito, after so many years, still struggles when reading, but he continues to come to the library to hang out with the volunteers, young women and men who embody the difference of being a kind and strong adult.  He loves Fridays when we bring down all our board games, he enjoys chess, rumikum and many others. 

This may not sound like a success story; but it is!  You are helping us to run and sustain a community library that offers young bright and sensitive boys a place to explore their own capacities, to overcome the sense of inadequacy their family and school have embedded in them; in fact, this place lets them be, that's why as soon as we open our doors boys and girls come flocking in.  We call this  Success !

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