Hridi Das: Letter to all the Womyn Of Colour in Libraries, Galleries, Museums and Archives
Hridi Das is originally from Bangladesh and currently lives in Ontario, Canada. She works as a Crown corporate librarian where her primary responsibility is managing contracts and ensuring license compliance for data resource acquisitions. Along with her Masters of Library and Information Science degree, she also has an undergraduate background in psychology and biology with a specialization in behavioural neuroscience. She is the recipient of the 2019 Upstate New York and Ontario Chapter of the Medical Library Association Ursula Poland Scholarship. Her professional interests include intersectionality, mental health, diversity, and equity in LIS and GLAM at large. Her hobbies include the following: dance, music, drawing, comics, video games, reading, cooking, languages, gardening, crafts, boxing, and travel.
To all the Womyn Of Colour in Libraries, Galleries, Museums and Archives:
This letter is not an act of self-flagellation but a letter in awe, a promise I intend to make. I am tempted to say that it’s not personal to assuage my white peers but when it comes to out identities intersecting with our profession, it’s always a little personal. It’s difficult to not let professional rage feel like a personal failing when we work in a system that was never made with us in mind.
When I first started my MLIS program two years ago, I only got an inkling of what was to come when I stepped into the orientation hall. There, in a sea of sixty others who would make up my cohort, I desperately scanned the crowd to find others who looked like me. Perhaps I should have done my research more thoroughly, combed over the statistics with a fine-tooth comb, so I was not blindsided by reality. The reality was a battering ram when I walked through the hallways and sat through my classes counting peers who looked like me on one hand with fingers to spare. I went through my time in a formal Library Information Science program trying to reach out to the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) program and centering my assignments and projects around BIPOC issues however I could – whether it was the center of my work or an extension I made, I tried. I couldn’t change the demographics of the program but I could shoehorn in BIPOC issues where I could to make my classmates feel uncomfortable, relishing in their jitteriness. I did not miss how during my solo presentations, my topic choices was met with stone-faced silence with palpable nervousness. This was in contrast to when I spoke on uncomfortable topics in a group project that had a white peer – their presence cushioning my message to be easier to digest.
Flash forward a year and a half: I am a newly minted librarian with a few awards under my belt with a fairly decent GPA. I am not a Spectrum Scholar or an ACRL Mosaic Fellow, no groundbreaking thesis project under my belt. I only discovered these diversity-focused opportunities after the completion of my program as I try to forgive myself for not doing just a little bit more to find them. I am also trying to forgive myself during this pandemic for still not being employed directly in the library field. This is much harder to do when you see your white peers progress in my field but you yourself do not. It’s one thing to know the stat that my field is 90% white, but it’s another to see my colleagues reap its benefits. I see it on my Facebook feed, declarations of acquiring positions and landing interviews. Sometimes it’s through nepotism (or “networking”) for a library-adjacent position. I take it all in, unable to stop the bitterness creeping up. I feel no happiness for them and I refuse to be ashamed of this. Then there’s me who worked herself to the bone for the last 2 months working 7 days a week rotating 2 jobs and using my spare time to apply to any and all library positions that come my way.
I have not heard back from any of them. The radio silence bolsters my imposter syndrome. Not in the sense that I doubt my abilities – I know that my varied skill set cannot be replicated. The syndrome shows itself as I realized that the field is stacked against those who look like me, that 90% statistic rearing its ugly head time and time again. I contemplate changing my name to something more Eurocentric/Americanized for my applications or keep it as is in the hopes that a company’s EDI team hires me out of pity. I cannot help but lament this as the future. Perhaps it’s one I could have avoided had I gone into the medical or law field as was expected by my parents, where the hiring discrimination is much lower. In the midst of my disillusionment, I have found sparks of hope on Twitter.
On Twitter, I have discovered BIPOC in the LIS field, specifically talented, brilliant WOC who are doing so much. They are changing policies, leading teams, and advocating for those who look like them. At this point, I do not know if I will get there or will my career be shrouded in ordinary. What I do know is that when I look at them, I know that they too, have gone through something similar or have felt echoes of my experience in their own life. I have learned more lessons that are uniquely relevant to POC from them in the last months than I have during the entire duration of my master’s.
If you are a WOC in librarianship doing diversity, equity and inclusion work towards antiracist and decolonized practices, I want to thank you for your labour, especially the invisible parts that white peers will likely take for granted. I hope you are able to rest and recharge as much as you need.
If you are a WOC whose librarianship does not revolve around diversity, I want you to know that your choices are just as valid. A WOC librarian who is happy and secure in their position is also an act of resistance.
To those WOC have come before me: on the days that you may doubt your efforts, asking the question ‘why bother?”, know that this young woman from a small city considers every single moment of your work as a collective win. She collects them in a glass jar of hope and tucks it away in her heart; the days she doubts herself, all she has to do is to close her eyes and feel her heartbeat fluttering.
To those WOC who will come after me: if you find yourself wondering how you will fit in this space that is not built for us and feel the talons of frustration claw into your chest, know that you have shared that thought with other individuals littered throughout history. It may not be the stuff of Disney princesses or comic book heroes – it is something more potent, powerful and untouchable.
I stand on the shoulder of giants.