Library Visit – Columbus, OH
What up fam, I just got back from Columbus Ohio, a city I visited for the first time in 2019 for the SOL Con at Ohio State organized by Dr Frederick Luis Aldama and Dr Kaitlin Marisol-Sweeney and a school visit to Weinland Park Elementary.
This time I was brought out by librarian and author Elisa Stone Leahy (picture in the middle) and I read alongside local author and teacher Dia Mixon who has some great bicultural and bilingual picture books here. In 2025 I started reaching out to libraries outside of the Bay more proactively and Elisa is one of a handful that invited me to come read!
It was great to share the space w/ the amazing librarians there and Dia who has a beautiful story “One Whole Me”.
I went up first after the librarians and had a really great reading with lots of ideas, participation, call and response, etc. The majority of these photos were taken by Elisa (thank you Elisa).
Big shout out to Keithia and the other librarians and teachers for their support that day.
BIG shout out to Cover to Cover Bookstore in Columbus for supporting us by having tons of books there for students to take home and read. If you check out their Instagram there’s a short reel of the reading up.
Here are a few shots I took of Dia Mixon while she was reading her book.
If you dig this, check out some of these other schools and libraries I’ve read at:
- Library Visit–Detroit Public Library/ Grosse Pointe Library, Detroit, MI
- School Visit–Lila Bringhurst Mandarin Immersion, Fremont, CA
- Library Visit–Castro Valley Public Library, Castro Valley, CA
- School Visit– University of San Francisco, SF, CA
- Library Visit– Philadelphia Free Library, Philadelphia, PA
Here are some of the lovely books I saw on display at this library. Full of diversity, beauty, color, and life! I love seeing books about Queer families, Black folks, AAPI, Native, Latinx etc communities too. This is the link to the reading and if you check out the site, they’ve got over 23 branches!
Some shots from around the city!
I went to the Wexner Center for the Arts to see my friend Dionne Custer Edwards who works in public programs there and is doing great work to uplift artists and to engage young people with art. And I went straight to the bookstore to see my great books and some friends’ work from the Bay and beyond. Then I walked the museum with her and was so inspired by the work of Hew Locke, who’s work as a British Guyanese artists’ work comments on imperialism, cross cultural expression, and it was fucking amazing.
Now, I know -the whole shit w/ the Epstein files and the news about the founder among many of the wealthy elite. And that is its own sick but revealing study of how pedophilic capitalists harm children and the way the wield power over law, governments, corporations, policy, etc to control the working class. More importantly its a reminder to us to act by putting our words, energy, funds, and resources behind people and places working to flip the script. That’s community based organizations, cooperatives, unions, collectives, media outlets, radical candidates , etc. I’m thinking of all of us who do not come from wealth trying to survive which is a huge number and I’m calling in those who have money or access to resources with politics that differ from the 1%. Put your $ where your values are.
That’s it fam, back to the Bay!
