The Brooklyn Public Library Gives Every Teenager in the U.S. Free Access to Books Getting Censored by American Schools

in Books, Current Affairs | August 22nd, 2022

We have cov­ered it before: school dis­tricts across the Unit­ed States are increas­ing­ly cen­sor­ing books that don’t align with white-washed con­ser­v­a­tive visions of the world. Art Spiegel­man’s Maus, The Illus­trat­ed Diary of Anne Frank, Alice Walk­er’s The Col­or Pur­ple, Toni Mor­rison’s The Bluest Eye, and Harp­er Lee’s To Kill a Mock­ing­bird–these are some of the many books get­ting pulled from library shelves in Amer­i­can schools. In response to this con­cern­ing trend, the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library has made a bold move: For a lim­it­ed time, the library will offer a free eCard to any per­son aged 13 to 21 across the Unit­ed States, allow­ing them free access to 500,000 dig­i­tal books, includ­ing many cen­sored books. The Chief Librar­i­an for the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library, Nick Hig­gins said:

A pub­lic library rep­re­sents all of us in a plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety we exist with oth­er peo­ple, with oth­er ideas, oth­er view­points and per­spec­tives and that’s what makes a healthy democ­ra­cy — not shut­ting down access to those points of view or silenc­ing voic­es that we don’t agree with, but expand­ing access to those voic­es and hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions and ideas that we agree with and ideas that we don’t agree with.

And he added:

This is an intel­lec­tu­al free­dom to read ini­tia­tive by the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library. You know, we’ve been pay­ing atten­tion to a lot of the book chal­lenges and bans that have been tak­ing place, par­tic­u­lar­ly over the last year in many places across the coun­try. We don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly expe­ri­ence a whole lot of that here in Brook­lyn, but we know that there are library patrons and library staff who are fac­ing these and we want­ed to fig­ure out a way to step in and help, par­tic­u­lar­ly for young peo­ple who are see­ing, some books in their library col­lec­tions that may rep­re­sent them, but they’re being tak­en off the shelves.

As for how to get the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library’s free eCard, their Books Unbanned web­site offers the fol­low­ing instruc­tions: “indi­vid­u­als ages 13–21 can apply for a free BPL eCard, pro­vid­ing access to our full eBook col­lec­tion as well as our learn­ing data­bas­es. To apply, email bo***********@**********ry.org.” In short, send them an email.

You can find a list of Amer­i­ca’s most fre­quent­ly banned books at the web­site of the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion.

NOTE: We’re see­ing reports on Twit­ter that a teacher in Nor­man, OK has been ter­mi­nat­ed for let­ting a stu­dent know about the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library’s free library. While this report has­n’t been ful­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed, teach­ers who want to rec­om­mend this resource should pro­ceed with cau­tion. Par­ents could seem­ing­ly refer BPL’s free library to stu­dents with less con­cern about retal­i­a­tion.

via KTVB

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If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Texas School Board Bans Illus­trat­ed Edi­tion of The Diary of Anne Frank

Ten­nessee School Board Bans Maus, the Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Graph­ic Nov­el on the Holo­caust; the Book Becomes #1 Best­seller on Ama­zon

The 850 Books a Texas Law­mak­er Wants to Ban Because They Could Make Stu­dents Feel Uncom­fort­able

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

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Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Has Given Away 186 Million Free Books to Kids, Boosting Literacy Worldwide

in Books, Education, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | August 19th, 2022

Dol­ly Par­ton cre­at­ed her Imag­i­na­tion Library, a non-prof­it which gives books to mil­lions of chil­dren every month, with her father, Robert Lee Par­ton, in mind.

“I always thought that if Dad­dy had an edu­ca­tion, there’s no telling what he could have been,” she mused in her 2020 book, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics:

Because he knew how to barter, he knew how to bar­gain. He knew how to make every­thing work, and he knew how to count mon­ey. He knew exact­ly what every­thing was worth, how much he was going to make from that tobac­co crop, what he could trade, and how he could make it all work

Despite his busi­ness acu­men, Parton’s father nev­er learned to read or write, a source of shame.

Par­ton explains how there was a time when school­ing was nev­er con­sid­ered a giv­en for chil­dren in the moun­tains of East Ten­nessee, par­tic­u­lar­ly for those like her father, who came from a fam­i­ly of 15:

Kids had to go to work in the fields to help feed the fam­i­ly. Because of the weath­er and because of con­di­tions, a lot of kids couldn’t go to school.

I told him, “Dad­dy, there are prob­a­bly mil­lions of peo­ple in this world who don’t know how to read and write, who didn’t get the oppor­tu­ni­ty. Don’t be ashamed of that. Let’s do some­thing spe­cial.”

Par­ton is con­vinced that her father, whose pride in her musi­cal accom­plish­ments was so great he drove over with a buck­et of soapy water to clean the bronze stat­ue her home­town erect­ed in her hon­or, was proud­er still of a nick­name bestowed on her by the Imag­i­na­tion Library’s child ben­e­fi­cia­ries — the Book Lady.

Togeth­er with the com­mu­ni­ty part­ners who secure fund­ing for postage and non-admin­is­tra­tive costs, the Book Lady has giv­en away some 186,680,000 books since the project launched in 1995.

Orig­i­nal­ly lim­it­ed to chil­dren resid­ing in Sevi­er Coun­ty, Ten­nessee, the pro­gram has expand­ed to serve over 2,000,000 kids in the US, UK, Aus­tralia, Cana­da and the Repub­lic of Ire­land.

Par­tic­i­pa­tion can start well before a child is old enough to attempt their ABCs. Par­ents and guardians are encour­aged to enroll them at birth.

The Imag­i­na­tion Library’s lit­tlest par­tic­i­pants’ love of books is fos­tered with col­or­ful illus­tra­tions and sim­ple texts, often rhymes hav­ing to do with ani­mals or bed­time.

By the time a read­er hits their final year of the pro­gram at age 5, the focus will have shift­ed to school readi­ness, with sub­jects includ­ing sci­ence, folk­tales, and poet­ry.

The books — all Pen­guin Ran­dom House titles — are cho­sen by a pan­el of ear­ly child­hood lit­er­a­cy experts. 

This year’s selec­tion includes such old favorites as The Tale of Peter Rab­bit, Good Night, Goril­la, and The Snowy Day, as well as Parton’s own Coat of Many Col­ors, based on the song in which she famous­ly paid trib­ute to her moth­er’s ten­der resource­ful­ness:

Back through the years

I go won­derin’ once again

Back to the sea­sons of my youth

I recall a box of rags that some­one gave us

And how my mom­ma put the rags to use

There were rags of many col­ors

Every piece was small

And I did­n’t have a coat

And it was way down in the fall

Mom­ma sewed the rags togeth­er

Sewin’ every piece with love

She made my coat of many col­ors

That I was so proud of

The Imag­i­na­tion Library is clear­ly a boon to chil­dren liv­ing, as Par­ton once did, in pover­ty, but par­tic­i­pa­tion is open to any­one under age 5 liv­ing in an area served by an Imag­i­na­tion Library affil­i­ate.

Pro­mot­ing ear­ly engage­ment with books in such a sig­nif­i­cant way has also helped Par­ton to reduce some of the stig­ma sur­round­ing illit­er­a­cy:

You don’t real­ly real­ize how many peo­ple can’t read and write. Me telling the sto­ry about my dad­dy instilled some pride in peo­ple who felt like they had to keep it hid­den like a secret. I get so many let­ters from peo­ple say­ing, “I would nev­er had admit­ted it’ or “I was always ashamed.”

Learn more about Dol­ly Parton’s Imag­i­na­tion Library, which wel­comes dona­tions and inquiries from those who would like to start an affil­i­ate pro­gram in their area, here.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Texas School Board Bans Illustrated Edition of The Diary of Anne Frank

in Books, Politics | August 18th, 2022

Accord­ing to a recent sur­vey con­duct­ed by the Texas State Teach­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, 70% of sur­veyed teach­ers said they were seri­ous­ly think­ing about leav­ing the teach­ing pro­fes­sion. “Lin­ger­ing stress from the pan­dem­ic is a fac­tor, but it isn’t the only one. Inad­e­quate pay, polit­i­cal attacks on edu­ca­tors and the fail­ure of state lead­ers to pro­tect the health and safe­ty of stu­dents and school employ­ees also have com­bined to dri­ve down the morale of teach­ers to the low­est lev­el in recent mem­o­ry and endan­ger our pub­lic school sys­tem,” TSTA Pres­i­dent Ovidia Moli­na said.

We recent­ly saw how Texas’ edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem has become a vast polit­i­cal mine­field, with con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tors attempt­ing to ban 800+ books from school libraries–pri­mar­i­ly because the books make stu­dents feel “uncom­fort­able.” This week, the Keller Inde­pen­dent School Dis­trict in Fort Worth, Texas decid­ed to can­cel an acclaimed illus­trat­ed adap­ta­tion of The Diary of Anne Frank, echo­ing the recent deci­sion by a Ten­nessee School board to ban Maus, the Pulitzer-Prize win­ning graph­ic nov­el on the Holo­caust. The ban of The Diary of Anne Frank was trig­gered by a par­ent com­plaint, which the right-lean­ing school board decid­ed to hon­or. Why would think­ing peo­ple want to opt out of teach­ing in the Texas edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem? It’s not hard to imag­ine.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Ten­nessee School Board Bans Maus, the Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Graph­ic Nov­el on the Holo­caust; the Book Becomes #1 Best­seller on Ama­zon

The 850 Books a Texas Law­mak­er Wants to Ban Because They Could Make Stu­dents Feel Uncom­fort­able

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

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The Oakland Public Library Puts Online a Collection of Items Forgotten in Library Books: Love Notes, Doodles & More

in Archives, Books, Libraries, Photography, Writing | August 15th, 2022

Librar­i­ans are cham­pi­ons of orga­ni­za­tion, and among its best prac­ti­tion­ers.

Books are shelved accord­ing to the Dewey Dec­i­mal sys­tem.

Cat­e­gories are assigned using Library of Con­gress Rule Inter­pre­ta­tions, Library of Con­gress Sub­ject Head­ings, and Library of Con­gress Clas­si­fi­ca­tion.

And Sharon McKel­lar, the Teen Ser­vices Depart­ment Head at the Oak­land Pub­lic Library, col­lects ephemera she and oth­er staffers find in books returned to the OPL’s 18 loca­tions.

It’s an impulse many share. 

Even­tu­al­ly, she began scan­ning them to share on her employ­er’s web­site, inspired by Found Mag­a­zine, a crowd­sourced col­lec­tion of found let­ters, birth­day cards, kids’ home­work, to-do lists, hand­writ­ten poems, doo­dles, dirty pic­tures, etc.

As Found’s cre­ators, Davy Roth­bart and Jason Bit­ner, write on the magazine’s web­site:

We cer­tain­ly didn’t invent the idea of found stuff being cool. Every time we vis­it our friends in oth­er towns, someone’s always got some kind of unbe­liev­able dis­cov­ered note or pho­to on their fridge. We decid­ed to make a bunch of projects so that every­one can check out all the strange, hilar­i­ous and heart­break­ing things peo­ple have picked up and passed our way.

McKel­lar told NPR that her project “lets us be a lit­tle bit nosy. In a very anony­mous way, it’s like read­ing peo­ple’s secret diaries a lit­tle bit but with­out know­ing who they are.”

The finds, which she stores in a box under her desk pri­or to scan­ning and post­ing, are push­ing 600, with more arriv­ing all the time.

Search­able cat­e­gories include notes, cre­ative writ­ing, art, and pho­tos.

One arti­fact, the scat­o­log­i­cal one-of-a-kind zine Mr Men #48, excerpt­ed above, spans four cat­e­gories, includ­ing kids, a high­ly fer­tile source of both humor and heart­break.

There’s a dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent vibe to the items that chil­dren forge for them­selves or each oth­er, as opposed to work cre­at­ed for school, or as presents for the adults in their lives.

McKel­lar admits to hav­ing a sweet spot for their inad­ver­tent con­tri­bu­tions, which com­prise the bulk of the col­lec­tion.

She also cat­a­logues the throw­away fly­ers, tick­et stubs and lists that adult read­ers use to mark their place in a book, but when it comes to place­hold­ers with more obvi­ous poten­tial for sen­ti­men­tal val­ue, she finds her­self won­der­ing if a library patron has acci­den­tal­ly lost track of a pre­cious object:

Does the per­son miss that item? Do they regret hav­ing lost it or were they care­less with it because they actu­al­ly did­n’t share those deep and pro­found feel­ings with the per­son who wrote [it]?

Actu­al book­marks are not exempt…

Future plans include a pos­si­ble writ­ing con­test for short sto­ries inspired by items in the col­lec­tion.

Browse the Found in a Library Book col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Pub­lic Library Receipt Shows How Much Mon­ey You’ve Saved by Bor­row­ing Books, Instead of Buy­ing Them

Free Col­or­ing Books from World-Class Libraries & Muse­ums: Down­load & Col­or Hun­dreds of Free Images

The New York Pub­lic Library Cre­ates a List of 125 Books That They Love

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Discover The Key of Hell, an Illustrated 18th-Century Guide to Black Magic (1775)

in Books, Religion | August 11th, 2022

Accord­ing to the Book of Rev­e­la­tion, the return­ing Christ arrives sur­round­ed by sev­en can­dle­sticks. In its author’s prophet­ic dream, “his head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire.” From his mouth issues “a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations.” It’s a star­tling image, cre­at­ed for sym­bol­ic pur­pos­es. With­out a key to what those sym­bols mean, the text remains obscure. It is, after all, a vision giv­en to a mys­tic her­mit exiled on an island.

Many a Rev­e­la­tion-inspired mag­i­cal gri­moire from suc­ceed­ing cen­turies also remains near­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble to non-adepts. Such is the case with the “strange 18th-cen­tu­ry man­u­script called Clavis Infer­ni (key of hell),” as Ben­jamin Breen writes at Slate. “Filled with invo­ca­tions, cryp­tic sig­ils, and paint­ings of super­nat­ur­al beings” — such as the illus­tra­tion from Rev­e­la­tion above — “the book defies inter­pre­ta­tion — as it was meant to do.” Also, like Rev­e­la­tion, the tex­t’s author­ship is mys­te­ri­ous, and yet sig­nif­i­cant to our under­stand­ing of its intent.

The Key of Hell is attrib­uted to a Cypri­anus, a name that “prob­a­bly refers to St. Cypri­an of Anti­och (d. 304 CE),” Breen writes in a post at Atlas Obscu­ra, “a very com­mon apoc­ryphal attri­bu­tion for medieval mag­i­cal texts, since Cypri­an was reput­ed to have been a pow­er­ful magi­cian and demon-sum­mon­er before con­vert­ing to Chris­tian­i­ty.” The use of pseu­doepig­ra­phy — an author assum­ing the name of a long-dead fig­ure — was com­mon prac­tice through­out the his­to­ry of both the­o­log­i­cal and alchem­i­cal writ­ing. Rather than an attempt at decep­tion, it could sig­nal the con­tin­u­a­tion of a tra­di­tion of occult knowl­edge.

The title page of the Key of Hell “seems to date it to 1717,” writes Breen, but a Sothe­by’s cat­a­logue entry claims, “the script seems to be of the late 18th cen­tu­ry” and dates it to 1775. At the Well­come Library — who host the text online in its entire­ty — we find this “Har­ry Pot­ter-esque” ori­gin sto­ry:

Also known as the Black Book, [the Key of Hell] is the text­book of the Black School at Wit­ten­berg, the book from which a witch or sor­cer­er gets his spells. The Black School at Wit­ten­berg was pur­port­ed­ly a place in Ger­many where one went to learn the black arts.

Writ­ten in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and “the Mag­i­cal Alpha­bet devised by occultist Cor­nelius Agrip­pa in his Third Book of Occult Phi­los­o­phy from 1510,” notes Flash­bak, the man­u­script is “filled with invo­ca­tions to spir­its and demons — includ­ing a Hebrew invo­ca­tion for sum­mon­ing God.” (It also includes help­ful instruc­tions for ban­ish­ing sum­moned spir­its.) The man­u­scrip­t’s full Latin title — Clavis Infer­ni sive mag­ic alba et nigra appro­ba­ta Meta­trona — trans­lates to “The Key of Hell with white and black mag­ic approved by Meta­tron,” an archangel in the Tal­mu­dic and Kab­bal­ist tra­di­tions. The use of this name sug­gests the spells with­in come from a high­er author­i­ty.

Breen, how­ev­er, found some unusu­al com­men­tary on the book’s pos­si­ble author, includ­ing the idea in Den­mark that Cypri­anus was “a fel­low Dane so evil dur­ing his life­time that when he died the dev­il threw him out of Hell,” writes pro­fes­sor of Nor­we­gian lit­er­a­ture Kath­leen Stokker. Cypri­anus was so enraged by this treat­ment that “he ded­i­cat­ed him­self to writ­ing the nine Books of Black Arts that under­lie all sub­se­quent Scan­di­na­vian black books.” Anoth­er apoc­ryphal sto­ry iden­ti­fies Cypri­anus as a “rav­ish­ing­ly beau­ti­ful” Mex­i­can nun from 1351 (?!) who met a “gory” end.

Who­ev­er wrote the Key of Hell, and for what­ev­er rea­son, they left behind a fas­ci­nat­ing book of sor­cery full of curi­ous illus­tra­tions and a cryp­tic cos­mol­o­gy. See Breen’s attempts to deci­pher some of its key sym­bols here and make your own with the full text at the Well­come Library.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Exquis­ite Water­col­ors of Demons, Mag­ic & Signs: Behold the Com­pendi­um Of Demonolo­gy and Mag­ic from 1775

1,600 Occult Books Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online, Thanks to the Rit­man Library and Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown

A Big Archive of Occult Record­ings: His­toric Audio Lets You Hear Trances, Para­nor­mal Music, Glos­so­lalia & Oth­er Strange Sounds (1905–2007)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Book of St Albans, One of the Finest Medieval Manuscripts, Gets Digitized and Put Online

in Books, History | July 26th, 2022

This past month, on the eve of the June 22nd feast of St Alban, the library of Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin announced that it had dig­i­tized the “13th cen­tu­ry mas­ter­piece” the Book of St Alban, a rich­ly illus­trat­ed man­u­script that “fea­tures 54 indi­vid­ual works of medieval art and has fas­ci­nat­ed read­ers across the cen­turies, from roy­al­ty to renais­sance schol­ars.”

Cre­at­ed by the Bene­dic­tine monk Matthew Paris, the man­u­script “chron­i­cles the life of St Alban,” notes The Irish Times, “and also out­lines the con­struc­tion of St Alban’s Cathe­dral in Hert­ford­shire.” The text and illus­tra­tions explain the ori­gins of a cult of St. Alban, the first Eng­lish mar­tyr, that began to spring up after his 4th cen­tu­ry death.

Accord­ing to the Ven­er­a­ble Bede, the Eng­lish monk who wrote the Eccle­si­as­ti­cal His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Peo­ple, the mar­tyr­dom of Alban involved a few mirac­u­lous events. Sen­tenced to die for his refusal to renounce Chris­tian­i­ty, Alban sup­pos­ed­ly peti­tioned God to dry up the Riv­er Ver so he could more quick­ly reach the place of his exe­cu­tion.

This mir­a­cle caused Alban’s Roman exe­cu­tion­er to fall to his feet, spon­ta­neous­ly con­vert, and refuse to kill the saint. A sec­ond exe­cu­tion­er stepped in to behead them both, where­upon this man’s eyes popped out of his head. “He who gave the wicked stroke,” writes Bede, “was not per­mit­ted to rejoice over the deceased; for his eyes dropped upon the ground togeth­er with the blessed mar­tyr’s head.”

In the illus­tra­tion of this gris­ly sto­ry (top) from the man­u­script, we see the exe­cu­tion­er hold­ing his eyes in his hand, and Alban’s head appears to have been caught by the hair on a tree branch above. Anoth­er illus­tra­tion, fur­ther up, shows a char­ac­ter named Her­a­clius mak­ing off with Alban’s head.

In a lat­er leg­end, Alban’s head rolled to the bot­tom of Holy­well Hill, and a well sprang from where it came to rest. On the sup­posed site of Alban’s exe­cu­tion now stands St Albans Cathe­dral, once St Albans Abbey, where the Book of St Albans remained for 300 years until Hen­ry VIII dis­solved Britain’s monas­ter­ies in 1539.

The book is writ­ten in both Latin and Anglo-Nor­man French, “which made it acces­si­ble to a wider sec­u­lar audi­ence includ­ing edu­cat­ed noble women,” Trin­i­ty Col­lege’s Caoimhe Ni Lochlainn writes. “It was bor­rowed by noble ladies of the peri­od, includ­ing the King’s sis­ter-in-law Count­ess of Corn­wall, Sanchia of Provence, and oth­ers.”

The man­u­script even­tu­al­ly made its way to Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin in 1661, where it has remained ever since, and where its “most­ly framed nar­ra­tive scenes” have been admired by a select few. Now every­one can access the book and its illus­tra­tions, made with a “tint­ed draw­ing tech­nique,” Lochlainn notes, “where out­lined draw­ings are high­light­ed with col­ored wash­es from a lim­it­ed palette. This tech­nique was dis­tinct­ly Eng­lish, dat­ing back to the Anglo Sax­on art of the 10th cen­tu­ry.”

See all the gris­ly details of this fas­ci­nat­ing arti­fact at Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions, and learn more about the man­u­script in the video just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece, the Book of Kells, Has Been Dig­i­tized and Put Online

The Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts of Medieval Europe: A Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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An Introduction to the Voynich Manuscript, the World’s Most Mysterious Book

in Books, History | July 8th, 2022

“The Voyn­ich man­u­script is a real medieval book, and has been car­bon-dat­ed to the ear­ly 1400s.” No mod­ern hoax, this noto­ri­ous­ly bizarre text has in fact “passed through the hands of many over the years,” includ­ing “sci­en­tists, emper­ors, and col­lec­tors.” Though “we still don’t know who actu­al­ly wrote it, the illus­tra­tions hint at the book’s orig­i­nal pur­pose,” hav­ing “much in com­mon with medieval herbals, astrol­o­gy guides, and bathing man­u­als.” Hence the like­li­hood of the Voyn­ich man­u­script being “some sort of med­ical text­book, although a very strange one by any mea­sure. Then there’s the writ­ing.”

This sum­ma­ry of the known his­to­ry and nature of the most mys­te­ri­ous man­u­script in exis­tence comes from the Youtube video above, “Secrets of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script.” Its chan­nel Hochela­ga has pre­vi­ous­ly been fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for episodes on medieval mon­sters, a guide to super­nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na from renais­sance Ger­many, Hoku­sai’s ghost art, and the Bib­li­cal apoc­a­lypse.

In short, the Voyn­ich man­u­script could hard­ly find a more accom­mo­dat­ing wheel­house. And as in Hochela­ga’s oth­er videos, the sub­ject is approached not with total creduli­ty, but rather a clear and straight­for­ward dis­cus­sion of why gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of enthu­si­asts have kept try­ing to fig­ure it out.

No aspect of the Voyn­ich man­u­script fas­ci­nates as much as its hav­ing been “writ­ten in a mys­tery lan­guage with a unique alpha­bet and gram­mat­i­cal rules.” It could be an exist­ing lan­guage ren­dered in code; it could be one cre­at­ed entire­ly and only for this book. Though attempts are made with some fre­quen­cy, “no one has been able to defin­i­tive­ly solve the Voyn­ich man­u­scrip­t’s lan­guage.” It could, of course, be that “we’ve fall­en for one big medieval prank,” but the video’s cre­ator does­n’t buy that expla­na­tion. Even in its incom­pre­hen­si­bil­i­ty, the text appears to pos­sess great com­plex­i­ty. If it were to be decod­ed, “would the mag­ic and mys­tery dis­ap­pear? Or would we uncov­er a whole new set of ques­tions and embark on anoth­er jour­ney entire­ly?”

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to “the World’s Most Mys­te­ri­ous Book,” the 15th-Cen­tu­ry Voyn­ich Man­u­script

The Mys­te­ri­ous Voyn­ich Man­u­script Gets Dig­i­tized: Explore the 15th-Cen­tu­ry Text That Lin­guists & Code-Break­ers Can’t Under­stand

The Voyn­ich Man­u­script: A New Doc­u­men­tary Takes a Deep Dive Into the Mys­ter­ies of the Bizarre Man­u­script

Has the Voyn­ich Man­u­script Final­ly Been Decod­ed?: Researchers Claim That the Mys­te­ri­ous Text Was Writ­ten in Pho­net­ic Old Turk­ish

The Writ­ing Sys­tem of the Cryp­tic Voyn­ich Man­u­script Explained: British Researcher May Have Final­ly Cracked the Code

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence May Have Cracked the Code of the Voyn­ich Man­u­script: Has Mod­ern Tech­nol­o­gy Final­ly Solved a Medieval Mys­tery?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Why You Should Read The Handmaid’s Tale: A Timely Animated Introduction

in Books, Current Affairs, Politics | July 6th, 2022

Prophe­cies are real­ly about now. In sci­ence fic­tion it’s always about now. What else could it be about? There is no future. There are many pos­si­bil­i­ties, but we do not know which one we are going to have.

– Mar­garet Atwood

There is no need to explain why Mar­garet Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale has gone from read­ing like a warn­ing of the near-future to an alle­go­ry of the present after the U.S. Supreme Court’s rul­ing in Dobbs v. Jack­son Women’s Health Orga­ni­za­tion. Atwood’s sto­ry revolves around the fic­tion­al Repub­lic of Gilead, which takes over the U.S. after a fer­til­i­ty cri­sis dec­i­mates the pop­u­la­tion. Overnight, the fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian theoc­ra­cy divides women into two broad class­es – Hand­maids: chat­tel who per­form the labor of forced birth through forced con­cep­tion; and the infer­tile who prop up the patri­ar­chal rul­ing class as wives, over­seers, or slave labor in the pol­lut­ed “colonies.”

It’s a bleak tale, a sto­ry far less about hero­ism than the TV series based on the book would have viewers–who haven’t read it–believe. (The 5th sea­son, slat­ed for this July, seems to have been delayed until Sep­tem­ber with­out expla­na­tion.) Why should we read The Hand­maid­’s Tale? Because it is not only a work of dystopi­an futur­ism, but also a nar­ra­tivized account of what has already hap­pened to women around the world through­out his­to­ry to the present. The nov­el is a prism through which to view the ways women have been oppressed through repro­duc­tive slav­ery with­out the sci-fi sce­nario of a pre­cip­i­tous loss of human fer­til­i­ty.

As Atwood has explained, “when I wrote The Hand­maid­’s Tale, noth­ing went into it that had not hap­pened in real life some­where at some time.” Some of the worst offens­es were not well-known. “Female gen­i­tal muti­la­tion was tak­ing place,” says Atwood, “but if I had put it in 1985 [when the nov­el was writ­ten] prob­a­bly peo­ple wouldn’t have known what I was talk­ing about. They do now.” But we can still choose to over­look the infor­ma­tion. “Ignor­ing isn’t the same as igno­rance,” Atwood says in the nov­el, “you have to work at it.” The quote opens the 2018 TED-Ed les­son by Nao­mi Mer­cer above on Atwood’s book, walk­ing us through its sources in his­to­ry.

The Hand­maid­’s Tale, the les­son points out, is an exam­ple of “Spec­u­la­tive Fic­tion,” a form of writ­ing con­cerned with “pos­si­ble futures.” This theme unites both utopi­an and dystopi­an nov­els. Atwood’s books trade in the lat­ter, but any read­er of the genre will tell you how quick­ly a more per­fect fic­tion­al union becomes a night­mare. The Cana­di­an writer has offered this lit­er­ary inevitabil­i­ty as an expla­na­tion for the mul­ti­ple crises of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy:

The real rea­son peo­ple expect so much of Amer­i­ca in mod­ern times is that it set out to be a utopia. That didn’t last very long. Nathaniel Hawthorne nailed it when he said the first thing they did when they got to Amer­i­ca was build a scaf­fold and a prison.

What Atwood does­n’t men­tion, as many crit­ics have point­ed out, are the slave pens and auc­tion hous­es, or the fact that Gilead close­ly resem­bles the slave-hold­ing Amer­i­can South in its theo­crat­ic patri­ar­chal Chris­t­ian hier­ar­chy and ulti­mate con­trol of wom­en’s bod­ies. And yet, the nov­el com­plete­ly side­steps race by hav­ing the Repub­lic of Gilead ship all of the coun­try’s Black peo­ple to the Mid­west (pre­sum­ably for forced labor). They are nev­er heard from again by the read­er.

This tac­tic has seemed irre­spon­si­ble to many crit­ics, as has the show’s side­step­ping through col­or­blind cast­ing, and the wear­ing of red cloaks and white bon­nets in imi­ta­tion of the book and show as a means of protest. “When we rely too heav­i­ly on ‘The Hand­maid­’s Tale,’ which ignores the pres­ence of race and racism,” says activist Ali­cia Sanchez Gill, “it real­ly dehu­man­izes and dis­miss­es our col­lec­tive expe­ri­ences of repro­duc­tive trau­ma.” Atwood’s “pos­si­ble future” pil­lages slav­ery’s past and con­ve­nient­ly gets rid of its descen­dants.

The trau­ma Gill ref­er­ences includes rape and forced birth, as well as the forced ster­il­iza­tions of the eugen­ics move­ment, car­ried out with the impri­matur of the Supreme Court (and con­tin­u­ing in recent cas­es). Kel­li Midg­ley, who found­ed Hand­maids Army DC, offers one expla­na­tion for using The Hand­maid­’s Tale as a protest sym­bol. Though she agrees to leave the cos­tumes at home if asked by orga­niz­ers, she says “we are try­ing to reach a broad­er audi­ence for peo­ple who need this mes­sage. We don’t need to tell Black women that their rights are endan­gered. They always have been.”

Maybe a new mes­sage after Dobbs v. Jack­son Wom­en’s Health Orga­ni­za­tion is that an assault on any­one’s rights threat­ens every­one. Or as Atwood wrote in a Cana­di­an Globe and Mail op-ed in 2018, “depriv­ing women of con­tra­cep­tive infor­ma­tion, repro­duc­tive rights, a liv­ing wage, and pre­na­tal and mater­nal care – as some states in the US want to do – is prac­ti­cal­ly a death sen­tence, and is a con­tra­ven­tion of basic human rights. But Gilead, being total­i­tar­i­an, does not respect uni­ver­sal human rights.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­garet Atwood Releas­es an Unburn­able Edi­tion of The Handmaid’s Tale, to Sup­port Free­dom of Expres­sion

Pret­ty Much Pop #10 Exam­ines Mar­garet Atwood’s Night­mare Vision: The Handmaid’s Tale

Hear Mar­garet Atwood’s Sto­ry “Stone Mat­tress,” Read by Author A. M. Homes 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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