Today is International Transgender Day of Visibility, which falls each year on the 31st March. The day exists to help raise awareness and also celebrate the lives of trans people and draw attention to the discrimination, violence and poverty trans people face as a result of prejudice, ignorance and misinformation.
stop by the Library Atrium on Monday-Tuesday next week, 17-18 March, and shared your message of goodwill. Stop by and share a local saying from your home county (including Britain!).
Looking for fun fiction and pleasure reading? The public library tuk-tuk truck will be parking on the plaza on the Tuesday with a selection of international fiction and to sign up new members for free access to their ebooks, audiobooks and all their print book collections.
If you haven’t yet stopped by the Library, I’d thoroughly recommend you make a detour to see our latest incredible photography exhibition by travel and documentary photographer Md Abdulla Al Mamun. Check out his Instagram feed for more of his unique insight into how images can remind us of our profound interconnectedness and the unspoken bond between species, emphasizing that we, as humans, share the same space and responsibilities as the animals and nature that surround us.
Come late late January, Ebook Central will be moving from using pdf to epub format ebooks. This will make these ebooks easier to read and navigate, display better on more devices, and allow publishers to build interactive audio and video into their devices.
Happy Disability History Month 2024!
Spanning the period including International HIV/AIDS Day, International Day of People with Disabilities, and International Human Rights Day, Disability History Month seeks to redress the severe and entrenched inequalities experienced by all those with disabilities, including people who develop illnesses as diverse as cancer and HIV, who are neurodiverse, or develop mental health problems.
One of the ongoing concerns about awareness months is that awareness and effort to undo prejudice and discrimination is needed every month of the year and not just the one where it receives special focus. So how can we help make racism history?
Author of ground breaking novels that explore themes of African culture and its wilful debasement and displacement by colonialism, Achebe lectured worldwide co-founded and directed Nigerian publishing houses won the Man Booker International Prize and Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize and received honorary degrees from over 30 universities worldwide.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1932, Hall graduated from Oxford University to become Director of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Professor of Sociology at the Open University, television presenter, journal editor, President of the British Sociological Association, and chair of two arts organisations. He famously coined the term ‘Thatcherism’.
A prominent and award-winning scholar, Gilroy rewrote the established narrative of global history, overturning romantic stories of witness, religion and the mythical ethnic homogeneity of Britain before the slave trade, challenged existing notions of trade, and breathed new life into the humanist tradition by involving philosophy, sociology, musicology, literature, history and critical theory into his study of the humanities and extending his arguments into scholarly and political discourses on race and anti-racism.
Self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet”, Audre Lorde dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia
