Press Release
June 5, 2023
The American Indian Library Association and the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Announce Winners of the 2023 Talk Story Grant
The American Indian Library Association (AILA) and the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA), supported by Springer Nature, are pleased to award a $500 grant to each of the following four libraries and community organizations to host Talk Story: Sharing Stories, Sharing Culture programming. The awarded libraries and community organizations are:
P.S. 90 The Magnet School for Environmental Science and Community Wellness School Library, located on Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York, will invite teen and expert poets of the New York City ghazal community to present a professional development session for staff on ghazals and mushairas. At a September open house event for parents and guardians, the school library and invited Pakistani poets will engage students and their adults in brief poetic reading and writing exercises centered around ghazals and the Pakistani tradition of painting poems on trucks. In addition, they will showcase their new Pakistani-centric collection of books and will have a story nook, in which adults can tell or read stories to children in Urdu, Punjabi, English or the language of their choice. The goal of the Autumn Mushaira is to highlight a rich and enduring literary tradition of a cultural and linguistic community that figures prominently in the P.S. 90, Coney Island and South Brooklyn communities. This project echoes the Talk Story mission by affirming students’ and families’ Pakistani and Urdu-speaking identities through an interactive and engaging literary arts program designed to appeal to, educate and entertain the entire school community. Autumn Mushaira invites intergenerational conversation, storytelling and writing and offers numerous inroads for engagement with Urdu and Pakistani literary traditions.
Hopkinton Public Library, located in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, will host an all-ages Kathak Indian Dance Workshop to support and engage their growing South Asian and multigenerational communities. This year, their summer reading theme focuses on literacy through relaxation, movement, and play for the whole family. The workshop will bring in members of Hopkinton’s diverse community to learn dance from a professional dancer and storyteller who will share her dance and story traditions with their community. They will support this program with culturally informed crafts for the different ages, as well as incorporating stories into their ongoing “Diversity Reads Book Club”, allowing neighbors to share and exchange their own lived experiences. Additionally, they will follow up with book and media displays about Indian culture, cooking, and traditions, as well as crafting kits which encourage exploring Indian art traditions and techniques. Through programs that help the whole family get up and move with dance and music, supported by print materials across the library’s collection in the form of own-voice narratives, the library hopes to enable the passage of family customs related to movement, music, and storytelling through cultural literacy.
Billings Public Library located in Billings,Montana will have their Teen Librarian and the Children’s department collaborate with Humanities Montana, a local nonprofit, to host a family storytelling event featuring Aspen and Cameron Decker via their “Sqelixw ‘Salish’ Storytelling”, centering the practices of reciprocity. BPL aims to provide materials published by the featured presenters, for the collection and to giveaway to community members during the program. The books and materials will be sourced from indigenous-owned business, Birchbark Books. In addition, BPL will produce a “Take and Make” craft activity directly related to the stories, advice, and opinions told by the storytellers to ensure that supplemental activities are respectful, relevant, and culturally competent. Funds will be divided between the Children’s department for a Take and Make craft and “Art Explorers” Tween Art Program and the Teen department for “Book Boxes” which allow teens to take home a book and activity to keep.
W.J. Niederkorn Library, located in Port Washington, Wisconsin will expand their collection to include AIAN books such as: Beadwork Techniques of the Native Americans, Craftwork Techniques of the Native Americans, A Bag Worth a Pony: The Art of the Ojibwe Bandolier Bag, One Bead at a Time, and Dancing for Our Tribe: Potawatomi Tradition in the New Millennium. They will also host a program for families on traditional Anishinaabe Beadwork with Erica Bhatti, citizen of Lac Du Flambeau Ojibwe. Participants in the program will learn two stitching patterns and have the opportunity to learn about the cultural importance of indigenous crafts and regalia through an interactive and enriching experience for people of all ages within their community. The Talk Story grant would allow them to provide materials for the program as well. Through the book collection and family program, they can center the cultural and social importances of AIAN voices, stories, traditions, and crafts in their community.
Talk Story: Sharing Stories, Sharing Culture is a literacy program that reaches out to Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) and American Indian children, their
families, and their intergenerational community members. The program celebrates and explores culturally informed stories through books, oral traditions, art, and immersive activities to provide an enriching experience of reading, language, and cultural literacy that challenges mainstream Anglocentric literacy practices. Grants provide financial support to libraries and community organizations who want to introduce a Talk Story program into their community programming.
Talk Story is a joint project between the American Indian Library Association (https://ailanet.org/) and the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association (www.apalaweb.org). It began as part of ALA 2009-2010 President Camila Alire’s Family Literacy Focus Initiative. 2023 is the 13th year that AILA and APALA have partnered on the Talk Story project and allocated grant funding to libraries to implement programs geared towards the AANHPI/American Indian communities. Thank you to our sponsor, Springer Nature.
Committee Chairs are Richenda Hawkins (AILA), Allison Wakau (AILA), Sarah Nguyễn (APALA), Becky Leathersich (APALA), and Patty Sumire McGowan (APALA). For more information, please visit the Talk Story web site: https://www.apalaweb.org/talkstorytogether/about.