New little library in Sudbury has perspectives from disabled, LGBTQ and BIPOC voices

A new, little library that allows the borrowing and sharing of books is up and running in Sudbury, and its curator hopes it will be filled with works from "brave activists" with diverse stories.

The library in northern Ontario focuses on the work and experiences of authors who are a part of the LGBTQ, BIPOC and disability communities.

"I've always wanted to do a little library," said curator Taryn Green, who lives with cerebral palsy.

"I originally wanted to make my little library just for children's books. But over the last year, I've started to do more of a self-discovery in my disability and wanted to find others, like me."

Green said she began research online to connect with others.

"I found that there's a big community out there — brave activists — and they're all writing books. So I started to read those books and found such a great perspective."

From there, Green decided to stock her little library with the kind of books she would read herself.

"I thought it would be amazing to share this with others and with our community to get that different disability perspective," she said. "And then why not use my little library for that and extend that to include LGBTQ plus and BIPOC voices as well?

"Why not try to bring these diverse voices, perspectives into the community and help support these authors?" 

'Big changes with very small steps'

Ryan Carbone, Green's friend, took notice of Green's work and decided to help.

"When I think back on my youth as a child, books like the one's Taryn has been curating were simply not accessible when I was younger," he said.  

"I would hazard to say that any book that was [available] often painted pictures that ended up not being completely genuine, or perhaps were skewed with certain critical parts missing to fill some sort of a narrative."

Carbone said he was immediately interested in how Green was approaching the project, and became involved following a tweet during Pride month.

"When the library was finally constructed, she sent me a picture. When Pride Month started at the beginning of June, I tweeted it out, and that's why we're in this together.

"What Taryn is doing is an example of how we can make big changes with very small steps."