Mayela Rodriguez
MFA ’19
Educational institutions create “collections” as a way to validate certain scholarship. Although the UM Library boasts a variety of collections, it does not have one devoted to Latinx Studies. Just as libraries validate certain scholarship via their choice of collections, professors grant canonical status to texts when assembling “readers” (compilations of articles and book chapters used within the context of an academic course). I plan to challenge the concepts of “collection” and “reader” by inviting the University of Michigan Latinx community to make readers from crowdsourced texts identified by surveying the Latinx campus community for selections of Latinx texts that they deem important. Readers will be bound with cardboard covers, alluding to the tradition of Latin American cartoneras (a form that makes literary publishing and distribution more accessible). The final readers will be displayed on a custom-built mobile “Latinx Library” cart within the lobbies of Shapiro Library and Hatcher Graduate Library. The “Latinx Library” will function as a visible space for Latinx scholarship where students can peruse and borrow readers through a lending system.
Library Mentors: Jamie Vander Broek and Edras Rodriguez-Torres