Librarian’s Pick: Being Heumann – Judith Heumann

“A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn’t built for all of us and of one woman’s activism—from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington—Being Heumann recounts Judy Heumann’s lifelong battle to achieve respect, acceptance, and inclusion in society.

Paralyzed from polio at eighteen months, Judy’s struggle for equality began early in life. From fighting to attend grade school after being described as a “fire hazard” to later winning a lawsuit against the New York City school system for denying her a teacher’s license because of her paralysis, Judy’s actions set a precedent that fundamentally improved rights for disabled people.

As a young woman, Judy rolled her wheelchair through the doors of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in San Francisco as a leader of the Section 504 Sit-In, the longest takeover of a governmental building in US history. Working with a community of over 150 disabled activists and allies, Judy successfully pressured the Carter administration to implement protections for disabled peoples’ rights, sparking a national movement and leading to the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Candid, intimate, and irreverent, Judy Heumann’s memoir about resistance to exclusion invites readers to imagine and make real a world in which we all belong.”

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Librarian’s Pick: Hood Feminism – Mikki Kendall

book jacket for Hood Feminism“Although there are more women CEOs today than there were at the beginning of the 1970s, complaints of workplace harassment and threats toward women who speak out have remained largely unchanged. But author and activist Mikki Kendall explains that the feminist movement has an even larger failure to contend with: the way that it has left behind women of color as white women grab more power. Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot critiques the dangers of this exclusionary brand of feminism and exhorts those who support changing it for the better.

Throughout the book, Kendall points toward political arenas that historically haven’t been tied to feminism, like food insecurity, gun violence and access to education—issues that largely affect communities of color. Kendall not only details the ways in which ignoring these issues has turned feminism into white feminism but also explains how these missteps have resulted in the failure of feminism as a whole. She convincingly demonstrates how this exclusionary behavior, intended to protect the interests of white women who “cling to the agency and selfhood they feel they have fought so hard to achieve,” in fact results in an outcome that threatens those interests: a strengthening of the patriarchy that actively works against the goal of equality.

Hood Feminism addresses a world that has abandoned marginalized people in favor of creating more opportunity for those who are already in power. For Kendall, the work of feminism is not the achievement of female success but rather the achievement of a larger ideal: genuine equality. If that is the goal, the work of feminism is far from over.

In fact, with rising income inequality, surging gentrification and shrinking social services, the work of feminism has only just begun.”

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Librarian’s Pick: My Dark Vanessa – Kate Elizabeth Russell

book jacket for My Dark Vanessa “We’re living in a moment when predatory men are being held responsible for the power they wield against women—especially younger women. Typically we hear about it when the now-adult women discuss their abuse years later. In My Dark Vanessa, first-time novelist Kate Elizabeth Russell gives voice to a 15-year-old girl who enters into a relationship with her teacher.

Vanessa Wye is a bright but socially disconnected girl at a Northeastern boarding school. Jacob Strane, a literature teacher who is 27 years her senior, zeros in on her loneliness and grooms his young student for a sexual relationship. Vanessa’s narration switches back and forth from the early 2000s, when she is an enthralled student keeping the relationship a secret, to 2017, when a reporter from a feminist blog reaches out to her in the hopes that she’ll discuss Strane’s abuse. It turns out that Strane had other victims, and they have come forward.

Those who want to deny sexual abuse of children are quick to point out how “willing” the children seem, particularly teen girls who are “asking for it.” Russell has clearly done her psychology homework on how sexual abuse transpires. Her storytelling is particularly strong when she shows how manipulation and coercion operate, and how predators intentionally choose isolated victims whose distress is unlikely to be noticed.

Still, as both a teen and an adult, Vanessa balks at the characterization that she had no agency. She insists their love was mutual, albeit complicated, and that she tempted him into risky behavior. “I wonder how much victimhood they’d be willing to grant a girl like me,” she wonders, pondering sexually suggestive photos that Strane took of her as a teen.

The reader is able to see heartbreaking truths that Vanessa can’t yet bear to look at, and this conflict is utterly gripping. It’s painful for the reader to view Vanessa’s experience through a more critical lens than she does, and this divide between reader and narrator will surely prompt us to ask questions about the creepy men in our own lives.

If there is a reading list for the #MeToo era, My Dark Vanessa deserves to be at the top of it.”

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Librarian’s Pick: A Women Like Her – Sanam Maher

A Woman Like Her: The Story Behind the Honor Killing of a Social Media Star by [Maher, Sanam] “In 2016, Pakistan’s first social media celebrity, Qandeel Baloch, was murdered in a suspected honor killing. Her death quickly became a media sensation. It was both devastatingly routine and breathtakingly brutal, and in a new media landscape, it couldn’t be ignored.

Qandeel had courted attention and outrage with a talent for self-promotion that earned her comparisons to Kim Kardashian—and made her the constant victim of harassment and death threats. Social media and reality television exist uneasily alongside honor killings and forced marriages in a rapidly, if unevenly, modernizing Pakistan, and Qandeel Baloch’s story became emblematic of the cultural divide.

In this definitive and up-to-date account, Sanam Maher reconstructs the story of Qandeel’s life and explores the depth and range of her legacy from her impoverished hometown rankled by her infamy, to the aspiring fashion models who follow her footsteps, to the Internet activists resisting the same vicious online misogyny she faced. Maher depicts a society at a crossroads, where women serve as an easy scapegoat for its anxieties and dislocations, and teases apart the intrigue and myth-making of the Qandeel Baloch story to restore the humanity of the woman at its center.”

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Librarian’s Pick: Women’s Work – Chris Crisman

“Today, young girls are told they can do—and be—anything they want when they grow up. Yet the unique challenges that women face in the workplace, whether in the boardroom or the barnyard, have never been more publicly discussed and scrutinized. With Women’s Work, Crisman pairs his award-winning, striking portrait photography of women on the job with poignant, powerful interviews of his subjects: women who have carved out unique places for themselves in a workforce often dominated by men, and often dominated by men who have told them no. Through their stories, we see not only the ins and outs of their daily work, but the emotional and physical labors of the jobs they love. Women’s Work is a necessary snapshot of how far we’ve come and where we’re heading next—their stories are an inspiration as well as a call to action for future generations of women at work.

Women’s Work features more than sixty beautiful photographs, including Alison Goldblum, contractor; Anna Valer Clark, ranch owner; Ayah Bdeir, CEO of littleBits; Beth Beverly, taxidermist; Carla Hall, blacksmith; Cherise Van Hooser, funeral director; Jordan Ainsworth, gold miner; Magen Lowe, correctional officer; Mindy Gabriel, firefighter; Nancy Poli, pig farmer; Katherine Kallinis Berman and Sophie Kallinis LaMontagne, Founders of Georgetown Cupcake; Doris Kearns Goodwin, presidential biographer; Sophi Davis, cowgirl; Abingdon Welch, pilot; Christy Wilhelmi, beekeeper; Connie Chang, chemical engineer; Danielle Perez, comedienne; Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo; Lisa Calvo, oyster farmer; Mia Anstine, outdoor guide; Meejin Yoon, architect; Yoky Matsuoka, a tech VP at Google; and many more.”

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WMPL Budget Vote: Timeline

WMPL Budget Vote: Timeline

Updated: March 27, 2020. Our timeline has changed a little! Our Budget Hearing, as well as our Vote and Trustee Election have been postponed. The new dates have been updated below. Keep an eye out for more information about our 2020 budget! We will continue to provide updates via our website.

Library Budget Vote and Trustee Election

Tuesday, June 23, 9:00 am – 9:00 pm at the Library


Library Board Meeting

The Board of Trustees meets each month in the meeting room; the public is welcome to attend.

Upcoming Dates: 

  • Tuesday, March 17, 7:00 pm

Budget Hearing

Tuesday, June 16, 7:00 pm