Text Size:
TALK
The Living Library Project
Ditch the Kindle, put away the iPad. Come to the Living Library where books are made from organic cells and living memory.
Details: Borrow a human book for 30 minutes of open dialogue. What’s it like to be an enviro activist artist? The last pre-megacity Mayor? Voted one of Canada’s “Top Immigrants”? Get a sex change? Get shot, be paralyzed, fight for accessibility and build a Foundation? Stories can only be truly told when ears and hearts are open.
When: Wed., Mar. 7 from 12:00 - 3:00 pm
Where: Great Hall, Hart House
Cost: Free! Sign up for a time below!
Drop-ins are welcome! But to secure your conversation, reserve a book now!
The Living Library Project is an event designed to create dialogue, promote understanding and reduce prejudice. A collection of "human books" (widely varied in gender, cultural and religious backgrounds, and age) is offered on "loan" to visitors. Facilitated by Living Library Librarians, visitors "borrow" the human book for up to 30 minutes for an open conversation. The informal "Reader-Book" interaction is a positive and safe way to question and explore pre-conceived notions around race, class, gender, religion, sexuality, and share personal narratives in an open face-to-face dialogue. We hope to promote tolerance, and deepen the understanding of social justice, equity and diversity.
More information can be found on The Living Library below.
Our Human Books:
Social Justice in Politics: An Oxymoron?
Barbara Hall
An Education in Diapering: One Son, Two Fathers
David Robertson and Peter Ronn
Life Before and After Religion
Debbie Molnar
Muslim-Canadian Integration
Suhail Abualsameed
Urban Transportation Techno Arts Scenester
Mobot
Merging Ideology with Material Realities
Alexandra Watson Mendis
Queering the Pregnancy Experience (ALT: The Queer Pregnancy Experience)
Michelle Poirier
Familiarity Breeds Understanding
Judy Farrant
Beyond the “Gay” or “Lesbian” Label: GenderQueer
Blacklisted and Beyond: The Story of an Environmental Artist & Author
Franke James
Building Your “Brand” as a New Canadian
Gautam Nath
Muslim, Gay, Marginalized … Helping Others
Asim Ashraf
Transition to Queer Trans Male
Tyler Watts
Travel Beyond Your Expectations
Darren Baptiste
Me, the Muslim Next Door
Rizwan Mohammad
On Judaism: Across the Secular-Orthodox Divide
Rabbi Aaron Katchen
Progressive Islam from a Gender-Equal Perspective
Laury Silvers
The Inextricable Connection Between “Luck” and “Hard Work”
Chia-yi Chua
LGBTQ Person of Colour: A UTM Student Activist Experience
Harla Receno
Define “Indecency”
Todd Klink
Back to top
Choose your Human Book and sign up for a time:
Book Descriptions:
Social Justice in Politics: An Oxymoron? / Barbara Hall
Borrow this book
Barbara Hall knows how to bring diverse groups together to build strong and safe communities. Whether as a community worker, the mayor of Toronto (1994-97), a lawyer or in her current role as Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, Hall’s work reflects a tireless commitment to social justice particularly as it relates to racism, gender discrimination, homophobia and questions of religious freedom.
Language: English
--
An Education in Diapering: One Son, Two Fathers / David Robertson and Peter Ronn
David Robertson is a psychiatrist at St. Michael’s hospital with an MD from UofT and a PhD in medical ethics from Oxford University. Peter Ronn is the president of Flight Level Media, a software and content development company supporting airlines and their passengers. Robertson and Ronn are also the proud, same-sex partner parents of their son, born last summer to a surrogate mother. Robertson and Ronn are able to provide insight into the same-sex male parent experience.
Language: English
--
Life Before and After Religion / Debbie Molnar
Debbie Molnar was raised a Mennonite but converted to Mormonism at the age of 19, marrying her husband when she was 21. At that time, she would have voted against marriage equality for same-sex couple given the opportunity. Instead, Molnar and her husband opted to leave the Mormon faith when she was 24 and went back to school at UofT as a mature student at 25. Now, a co-founder of the Mature Students’ Association, Molnar has become a queer ally and an avowed agnostic. She hopes to share how spiritual paradigm shifts can open you to new ideas and guide you to your next opportunity.
Language: English
Back to top
--
Muslim-Canadian Integration / Suhail Abualsameed
Suhail Abualsameed immigrated to Canada from his native Jordan. With a background in architecture and travel, he is now a community worker, public speaker, researcher, designer and human rights advocate who has been working with immigrant and refugee queer youth. He also works on health-related issues within the Muslim communities of the Greater Toronto Area. Abualsameed’s focus is around identity, human rights, immigration, youth and queer issues as well as the social determinants of health.
Languages: English, Arabic
Back to top
--
Urban Transportation Techno Arts Scenester / Mobot
Mobot is an urban planner/policy-wonk by day and circus kitten/hula hoop addict by night. An environmentalist from Alberta, she is familiar with being a contradiction wrapped in an enigma, dividing her time primarily between transportation planning, running an independent circus performance troupe, and supporting + promoting public ARTivism. Mobot sees the hoop as an extension of herself, and feels it has transformed how she moves through city spaces and interacts with people along the way; spend some time with Mo and rediscover your love for play.
Language: English
Back to top
--
Merging Ideology with Material Realities / Alexandra Watson Mendis
Alexandra Watson Mendis is a complex mix of threads, not unlike the jewelry in the store she runs with her husband in Parkdale. A native Torontonian and product of a Sri Lankan father and a white Canadian mother, Mendis grew up as an ambassador for race relations within the Toronto District School Board. She continued the mixing pattern with her husband, a German man with a daughter by a Chinese mother. Her self-stated biggest challenge is to figure out how to merge her life’s work in jewelry design and her love of beautiful things with desire to live in a far less materialistic and consumer-driven world. Life is tricky as a socialist jeweler!
Language: English
Back to top
--
Queering the Pregnancy Experience / Michelle Poirier
Michelle Poirier is an Adult Education & Community Development student at OISE, as well as working in the Office of Human Rights & Equity Services at McMaster University. She is also a white, able-bodied, female identified, young queer woman – who is pregnant with her first child. Poirier hopes to share a greater understanding of the processes involved in conceiving a child with two wombs, and will be open to answering questions about the systemic and attitudinal barriers often faced by young, queer, pregnant women.
Language: English
Back to top
--
Familiarity Breeds Understanding / Judy Farrant
Judy Farrant is a former flight attendant and current Toronto business owner who functions as both a facilitator/guest speaker/adult educator as well as a writer/story teller. Farrant’s “book” shares her evolution from unionized employee in a global workplace to being her own boss in an environment where diversity comes to her in the form of her employees – at one point her staff represented 16 different countries and languages – as well as her shift in perspective on something as seemingly black and white as arranged marriages.
Languages: English, German
--
Beyond the “Gay” or “Lesbian” Label: GenderQueer
Ayden Cichy, born in Poland and raised in both Canada and the United States, is a GenderQueer, daughter, brother, Community Worker, partner, dreamer and a volunteer within the LGBTQ community. Ayden doesn’t like the idea of checking the M or F box and instead supports always having an “other” or “GQ” option. Cichy’s goal is to share the spectrum of realities within the Trans community, and to help people move beyond bare tolerance to actual acceptance.
Languages: English, Polish
Back to top
--
Blacklisted and Beyond: The Story of an Environmental Artist & Author / Franke James
Franke James claims she has been blacklisted by the Canadian government for making art that is “against Canada’s interests”, a fact she discovered through Access to Information (ATIP) documents and which she says triggered the cancellation of her 20-city European climate change art show. James will share how she is fighting back using creativity, political savvy and social media as well as why she thinks Canadians need to speak up for free speech.
Language: English
Back to top
--
Building Your “Brand” as a New Canadian / Gautam Nath
Gautam Nath has lived in Canada for just over three years and has already won the Top 25 Canadian Immigrants Award 2011. Nath founded the Multicultural Marketing Society of Canada, is a partner in Toronto-based multicultural marketing & communications agency Monsoon Communications, and both started and continues to maintain several online self-help groups for newcomers. Nath’s focus is on building your personal brand as an immigrant, as well as sharing your experiences in positive and non-confrontational ways to build collective understandings outside your own community.
Languages: English, Hindi
Back to top
--
Muslim, Gay, Marginalized … Helping Others / Asim Ashraf
Asim Ashraf overcame violence, poverty, family mental illness and instability growing up in suburban Toronto. He also confronted the contradictions of being a Muslim and being gay while getting his Honours Bachelor of Science from UofT and becoming a facilitator for a support group of queer Muslims across the GTA. His story can help you re-evaluate acts of violence as opportunities, acts of compassion as a debt to pay forward, and times of acts of uncertainty as a chance to reflect and re-evaluate your priorities and future actions.
Languages: English, French, Urdu/Hindi
Back to top
--
Transition to Queer Trans Male / Tyler Watts
Tyler Watts has gone from lesbian to queer to trans and is now a transgendered male. Since taking surgical steps towards a medical transition from female to male, Watts has faced transphobia, ignorance, systemic oppression as well as a personal struggle with identity and community, all the while becoming comfortable with a body and identity as an out queer trans man. Watts’ book is an opportunity to ask honest questions and better understand the transformational experience of a transgendered person.
Language: English
--
Travel Beyond Your Expectations / Darren Baptiste
Darren Baptiste is a traveler with a simple mission: challenging you to be the best you. “Do something” is his motto. Baptiste’s latest journey was a four-and-a-half month long, 13-country solo motorcycle trip from Toronto, Canada to Toco, Trinidad; his encounters included everything from being robbed by police and chased by wild horses to being applauded by school children and befriended from countless strangers. Baptiste’s takeaway from these experiences is also his central message: If I can do this, what can you do?
Language: English
Back to top
--
Me, the Muslim Next Door / Rizwan Mohammad
Born in Toronto to Muslim parents of Indian heritage, Rizwan Mohammad studied Islamic History at the University of Toronto and Islamic Philosophy at McGill University. For the last 16 years he has been teaching Muslim youth in the Greater Toronto Area the Qur’an, the life of the Prophet Muhammad, and the principles of the Shari’a. For the last three years he has traveled across Canada, working with youths of diverse faiths and cultures to address social issues within their local communities. His story was recently featured in the CBC Radio Canada International (RCI) web documentary, Me, the Muslim Next Door.
Language: English
Back to top
--
On Judaism: Across the Secular-Orthodox Divide / Rabbi Aaron Katchen
Rabbi Aaron Katchen found his way to orthodox Judaism — despite having grown up in a secular home. Being able to relate to both worlds has been an asset to Katchen’s professional life at Hillel, a pluralistic Jewish student organization where he currently serves as a Jewish chaplain at the University of Toronto. As someone who has both lived and worked in Canada, the United States, England and Israel, Katchen can share his insights and experiences with world Jewry.
Languages: English, Hebrew
Back to top
--
Progressive Islam from a Gender-Equal Perspective / Laury Silvers
Laury Silvers, as a Christian/Jewish convert to Islam, would seem to be a contradiction in religious terms. And yet she has found a way to positively integrate all three through her studies of Islam and Sufism. Silvers is now an activist in the Progressive Islam movement who helped to co-found and continues to run a gender-equal/LGBTQ-open mosque in Toronto. Silvers brings her own unique perspective to gender in Islam and Sufism (including the legalities of women-led prayer) -- applying both historical and modern frameworks — as well as her work on opening up religious leadership to all Muslims.
Language: English
Back to top
--
The Inextricable Connection Between “Luck” and “Hard Work” / Chia-yi Chua
Chia-yi Chua emigrated to Canada from Singapore after completing his 2.5 years of compulsory military service. As a newcomer to Canada, Chua immersed himself in Canadian culture, trying out as many student and non-student kinds of experiences as he could. Twenty-four years later, Chua is a courtroom advocate, a practicing lawyer for 17 years, a partner at the law firm of McCarthy Tetrault, and winner of the inaugural Canadian Immigrant Magazine’s Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Awards in 2009. Chua’s passion is for mentoring and mentorship programs, particularly those for recent immigrants, and he is proud to serve on the board of ACCESS (a settlement agency serving primarily immigrants) and the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers.
Language: English
Back to top
--
LGBTQ Person of Colour: A UTM Student Activist Experience / Harla Receno
Harla Receno is a soon-to-be-former undergrad at the University of Toronto Mississauga campus, working towards finishing a double-major in Sociology and English. Receno came out in second year university, and soon afterwards became a member of OUT@UTM where she has been particularly active in community projects that raise awareness of LGBTQ issues and leadership within that community. Receno’s focus is on raising LGBTQ awareness both within and without and hopes to help empower others to do the same.
Language: English
Back to top
--
Define “Indecency” / Todd Klink
Todd Klink is the co-owner of Goodhandy’s, a Toronto pansexual nightclub. The former Windsor fruit and vegetable farm boy is also an award-winning novelist, screenwriter and journalist who has produced 160 adult DVDs, 42 of which he directed. In 2010, Klink and his business partner Mandy Goodhandy were Grand Marshalls for the Toronto Pride 2010 parade. Klink is a former sex worker as well as a vocal advocate for the decriminalization of prostitution.
Language: English
Back to top
What is The Living Library Project?
Created in 2000 by the founders of Stop the Violence in Denmark, the Living Library has since been held in countries all over the world including Romania, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Italy, Holland, Slovenia, Belgium, Portugal and Australia. The Living Library organization offers free resources include organizer handbooks, suggestions for evaluation methods, and a wide network of former organizers to draw support. For more information, please see www.living-library.org.
Though we live in one of the most diverse cities in the world, we continue to face challenges to social cohesion such as discrimination, intolerance and prejudice. Lacking a sense of belonging, a feeling of safety, or experiencing alienation from our neighbours, classmates and colleagues creates stress in already over-burdened lives. Projects like the Living Library promote a sense of understanding of others, empower the individual to share experiences and engage in productive dialogue as a means to build community and lessen pressure on the human.
The Human Book Project is multi-faceted and includes numerous stakeholders. One pertinent theme resounding strongly through all participants alike (organizers, librarians, books, dictionaries and especially borrowers) is that of allowing yourself to gain knowledge through another’s expression. To create space for dialogue and critical reflection on issues that aren’t usually given such personal and safe spaces for discussion. In the words of the organizers participants are encouraged to”[m]eet your own prejudice! Instead of talking about it, simply meet it”. This mean people from all walks of life expressing and getting to know about themselves and one another.
Back to top
Hart House/ härt hous / noun
- A living laboratory of social, artistic, cultural and recreational experiences where all voices, rhythms and traditions converge.