Cognotes 2018 Annual Conference Highlights - 4

4

COGNOTES

ALAANNUAL.ORG/MOBILE-APP|#ALAAC18

2018 ANNUAL HIGHLIGHTS

Librarian of Congress and Archivist of the United States
Discuss Collaborations
by Katelyn Sanders, University of Oklahoma

Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden
and Archivist of the United States David
Ferriero are passionate about accessibility of information and engaging history.
Their June 24 discussion was riddled with
competitive banter, though the respect
they have for each other was clear. As they
talked about their work, they peppered one
another with historical jabs and quips about
which institution has the more interesting
artifact or more exciting program. While
Hayden teased Ferriero that the Library
of Congress completed digitalization of
Alexander Hamilton's letters to his wife,
Ferriero shot back that the Archives have
his wartime documents from his time as
George Washington's aide de camp.
The two discussed collaborative proj-

ects, including working with
the Smithsonian Museum of
Natural History. They described
ways the intuitions can work
together, with an example that
the Library holds the documents that the Wright brothers
wrote about their plane, while
the Archives have the patents,
and the Smithsonian has the
plane itself. Hayden described
their collaborative work as
"cross-fertilization between
institutions."
Both have developed programs to engage the public.
Ferriero has developed exciting
initiatives to involve children,
including a sleepover at the Archives, to
which Hayden joked that she wants to

poach the program, and that the Library
of Congress has Thomas Jefferson's recipe

for macaroni and cheese that they could
serve the kids.

Jonathan Eig Doesn't Pull Any Punches
by Paige J. Dhyne, University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign iSchool

Jonathan Eig is curious, which is a good
thing, as it's the number one quality of a successful biographer. His curiosity led him to

tell the story of the boxer who just wouldn't
quit: Muhammad Ali. In the June 24 Auditorium Speaker presentation, Eig discussed
his book, Ali: A Life, a PEN/ESPN award
winner. Eig discussed his role in solving the
disconnect between his enchantment with

Ali's story and the truth of Ali's story. "The
storyteller's job is to find the motive, explain
the meaning," he said. "And that is the challenge. If you're going to write this book and
it's going to be worth a damn, you need to
be able to explain what made the person."
One of Eig's greatest challenges was writing about a man
with which he shares nothing in
common - except, as the attendees learned, a sense of humor.
As a biographer, Eig visited the
places that Ali had boxed and
met people who influenced him.
But Eig took it a step further to
try and understand the black
kid who grew up in the Jim
Crow South and overcame the
political and racial intolerances
of his time.
On the morning he was to
interview Ali, Eig ran the exact
route that Ali ran as a child, 60
years earlier. Eig understood that
Ali used to race the city bus every
morning to school and would

"Every story belongs to
someone, but it belongs
to all of us as well. Ali
left his to me. It was his
life, but it's my story.
I've pulled no punches,
it's all in there."
stop at every city block on the way until the
bus caught up. He asked Ali, "Is there anything you want to say? The last word in the
book should be yours." Ali never answered
him, however, as he was too ill, but Eig
received word later from Lonnie, Ali's wife,
that Ali wanted the book to be read to him by
Eig. Unfortunately, he never had the chance
with Ali's sudden passing.
In a time in which people isolate themselves and differences can seem scary, Eig
feels privileged to know strangers intimately
through his career as a biographer. "Every
story belongs to someone, but it belongs to
all of us as well. Ali left his to me," he said.
"It was his life, but it's my story. I've pulled
no punches, it's all in there."

More Than a Cookbook: A History Revealed
by Paige J. Dhyne, University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign iSchool

The ALCTS President's Program, sponsored by the University of Kentucky Libraries, featured the James Beard Book Award
winner Michael Twitty, author of The Cooking Gene: A Journey through African American
Culinary History in the Old South. When
Twitty approached the podium, he dished
out the truth about his identity, his culture,
and what it means to track the legacy of his
ancestors through cuisine and the political
erasure of the historical South. "This is not
a cookbook filled with recipes. My work is
not about making the food, but how the food
makes us," he said.
The book came from a need to place
himself and his ancestors on the timeline
of the South, something he realized he
needed to do after experiencing the death
of his mother and realizing she too was a
whole person - a child who grew into a

woman with many stories to tell. When he
first approached publishers, they had asked
him to write about different topics that
embraced only one aspect of his identity.
But he wanted to write about real food, his
Southern food "daily cooked, daily eaten,"
made by people who hold complex identities like himself: Black, Jewish, Gay, and
African-American.
Twitty read from his book while dispensing multiple truths. He discussed the
enslavement of his people, our people as
American citizens, and the research process
which revealed documents that invalidated
their identities and instead assigned them a
monetary value. He told of how people in
enslavement - a distinction he makes in that
his people were not nouns (i.e., slaves), but
living and suffering due to an assigned title
that described free laborers - were brought
to America based on hungers fueled by rice
and sugar. "We all have a cooking gene that
codes to the same phenotype," he explained.

James Beard
Book Award
winner
Michael
Twitty,
author of
The Cooking
Gene: A
Journey
through
African
American
Culinary
History in
the Old
South.

"The food on the table as inspired by other
cultures and countries."
Lastly, Twitty addressed the librarians in
the audience about the politics of the library
spaces we cultivate. Archive materials aboout
black and African Americans de-humanize
them in the way they were recorded, but
librarians can help ease the discomforts of

reading these documents by evolving spaces
and services. Beyond being accepting, Twitty
urged, "Use spaces to create family, to bridge
people, and to create the peace and civility we
desperately need right now in this country."
Twitty will continue to explore other
aspects of his identity in the next book of
this trilogy, Kosher Soul.


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