On her quest, she encounters the very profound, individual, and structural face of discrimination and the debasing effects of denial of information and library services to Latinos and minorities—let them pay taxes, but don’t let them in the library!
It is the story of Elizabeth Irene Martínez, an early Latina
pioneer administrator in the library world—and a leading advocate of library
services to Hispanics and the Mexican and Latino communities. She witnessed and
suffered racial hostilities and fought the denial of library services to
minorities. The story includes the spiritual strength
she drew from her ancestors, her vigor, which helped her to stave off the
professional criticism. This compelling narrative documents her
struggles to provide library services to the underserved populations and the
contentious issues that divided American librarianship then, and today, its
persistent inability to recognize and serve diverse communities, the Latino
population in particular. It also documents the hostile response and backlash
from the white leading administrators and library board members to her
legitimate demands. Her account is a
story of enduring professional friendships, an indictment of the library profession,
bitter betrayals, and overt racial discrimination by leaders of the American
public libraries.
This book comes at an appropriate time when bigotry, racial
discrimination, and inequities in public services have driven to exasperation
victimized minorities and people of good conscience. When the wounds of racial
divisions, lack of services, and conflict in
American institutions—often very well hidden to this day in American
libraries—have come opened and bleed shame, discontent, anger, if not
remorse, sorrow, and regret. On June 26, 2020, four days before this book went to press, and about 144 years after its founding, The American Library Association (ALA), very likely forced by the unprecedented racial demonstrations in the streets of America, has issued a declaration of responsibility: "ALA takes responsibility for past racism, pledges a more equitable association." However, will the status quo change?
Hers is a Chicana
chronicle, a Latina woman’s story, an American story. It is a tale mainly
written on the open stage of American libraries over the last four
decades. The White entrenched library
world saw her mission of diversity and expanding services to minorities as
aggression to white dominance over budget and services. She hopes that young
people of all ethnicities, races, and cultures who are entering any profession
striving for changes to address multicultural communities will find in her
story inspiring to fight for a racially inclusive and pluralistic society.
Voyages of an Oceanless Boat exposes the cracks in our American reality, explores Hood Existentialism, and exonerates and examines the confused and choiceless of the atrocities poverty makes them commit.
This story needed to go beyond the hyper-realism usually associated with representations of the ghetto and its conditions. Searing and powerful, this work could not be more urgent in our present moment. --Roanne Kantor, Professor of English, Stanford University