Books are a vital ingredient for an adventurous life. To open a book is to be transported to other cities, worlds, or characters’ interior lives different from yourself. Every book is also a return ticket home, one that will never leave you empty-handed. In the process of reading, your capacity for empathy expands and shapes the rest of your life.
Since Marpha Foundation began in 2013, two of our goals have been to reopen Marpha’s village library and establish a library at the Rosehips Center for Creative Learning. Finally, in March 2015, we accomplished both!
The Rosehips Center Library, open 7 days a week, makes a dynamic range of titles accessible to staff and visitors of all ages. Our collection has grown with generous contributions from friends and visitors and donations from presses whose vision we value and share. We are grateful to Akashic Books, Brick Books, C-O-R&P, Flashlight Press, Future Tense Books, Graywolf Press, New Directions, Publication Studio, Semiotext(e), SF/LD, Tara Books, Ugly Duckling Presse, and Wave Books for their thoughtful contributions.
In March 2015 Marpha Foundation reopened the community library in Marpha village. Most of our students did not know there was such a thing! The space had been closed for over 7 years when we dusted its shelves and opened its doors. The Library is now open every Friday from 3-4:30 pm.
Established in 1988 with seed money from a private Canadian donor, Marpha’s community library was once a hub for all ages. Its collection grew with contributions from the American and Indian Embassies, the Asia Foundation, and the British Council.
The library also housed the only phone in the village and later the first computers and photocopy/fax machine. With the spread of landlines and eventually wifi and smartphones, the library lost its more urgent and popular appeal as a communication center. While the library’s early technologies may have become obsolete, its books continue to hold opportunities for learning.
Today our students are so excited to visit the library. Watching as they carefully choose books from the shelves makes it hard to believe that an earlier generation of Marpha’s youth lost this curiosity. Marpha Foundation is committed to keeping this love of reading alive.
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” ―Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
