I am moving. I am moving from a house to a house, subtext to that statement: lots of stuff. Also I am moving from renter to home owner which means I really don’t want to bring any clutter. It is easy for me to jettison clothes I haven’t worn for a couple of years, or those which really don’t fit anymore. Furniture which I meant to fix but haven’t is mostly an easy decision. The kitchen is time-consuming, with the wrapping of plates and glasses, but simple in its choices. Art which does not presently have a place, framed or not, mask or sculpture is easy to store, and I do change it up from time to time. (My painter mother always told me at least change the placement of your art, if not change the pieces, because after a while art tends to fade out and become like the paint on your walls, seen mostly when it is dirtied or chipped.) Books though, ah there is the challenge.
It takes me a while to pack to move. I always want to start with good order, so I pack with order. This means that for me the packing of books is particularly slow. Not only do I pack by genre, fiction, essays, poetry, biography, etc. (My husband has been joking with prospective movers about the “library” that will be a part of the move.) I need to consider if I really want to carry all the books to the new home.
When I moved from San Francisco to Richmond to live with my now husband, over three years ago, I did a deep culling of my books. I let go of three quarters of the novels, a third of the non-fiction, and a more modest amount of the poetry. Yes, I have read Invisible Man three or four times, it was an easy keep. The same with Marquez, Morrison, Armah, Hong Kingston, but really was I going to read one of the first AIDS novels featuring a woman, a Black woman again? (I believe its name was Fever but I di let it go and have forgotten) It was a worthy novel, but did not provide me with lasting insights. Maybe that is because I was at the time living at Ground Zero, e.g. San Francisco and had lots of info on the subject. On the other hand I pride myself on having a really good library of African American literature and this was a very good book. I let it go, along with a pile of science fiction which didn’t have the depth of Octavia Butler or Ray Bradbury.
Then there was the biography and autobiography, am I really going to ever read or resource Armstrong’s Muhammad, an excellent and comprehensive bio of the Muslim prophet. It stayed along with Mernissi’s Life of a Girl in a Harem, which I teach from time to time. Pope Joan, the one female pope and the reason why a chair, resembling a commode, was invented so that a priest could feel under the pope elect’s robes and make sure he had the necessary genitalia to be proclaimed pope, was an easy yes. But really how much do I care about Emerson’s life? Even Thoreau with his idyllic Walden Pond never bothered to mention the enslaved Africans he had to see on his daily walks, or his dutiful sister who brought him the meals he did not need to cook or clean up after. And what of the poetry? Maybe I haven’t opened this or that particular volume of poetry in the past few years but I may this year.
At any rate I made those cuts, but now I am packing books again and the questions have returned. A very few books which I let go I later wished I had kept. For the record, my name is devorah and I am a Bookaholic. My collection has grown in the last three years and needs another culling. But every book is a teacher in its own way. So I am carefully looking again at each book and making the more or less painful cuts that should be made as I look forward to unpacking and re-shelving, anticipating the rediscovery of treasures that had slipped to the back, the re-meeting with close friends, and the renewed excitement garnered by my small treasure trove of books.
Storyteller by Leslie Marmon Silko, though I’ll probably never keep any particular copy for more than a year because I give this book away regularly. Silko reminded me that we are all living in mythic times. Read Yellow Woman, you are welcome.
The Secret of Platform 13 by Eva Ibbotson. Because you never know when you might turn a corner into an alternative universe.
Chiyo-ni Woman Haiku Master, because when I was in High School it was always Bassho but now that I’m more grown… Chiyo-ni.
From Spirit to Matter by Carol Lee Sanchez, because maps are important things and there aren’t that may for mixed Native women who read obsessively, because she embraced complexity.