Library of Congress's Blog, page 11

Viet Thanh Nguyen: Finding a Voice in America

Viet Thanh Nguyen fled Vietnam as a child, escaping Saigon with his family the day before the capital city fell to communist forces. They went to military bases in the Philippines and Guam, then lived in Pennsylvania for a few years before finally settling in San Jose, California, where he discovered the American dream was complicated.

By the time he was in college, he explained at the National Book Festival last Saturday, he was reading James Baldwin and Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, and he became acutely aware of the ties between American imperialism abroad and its domestic racism.

His mother, who had survived internal displacement, war and colonialism in Vietnam and then remade herself once more in the United States, could no longer handle the stress. In his late teens, she was hospitalized with mental illness. It was all very disorienting.

“I was raised in a very Vietnamese household in a Vietnamese refugee community and my parents told me, ‘You are 100 percent Vietnamese,” he told C-Span during the festival. “At the same time, I was constantly being exposed to American culture, so I felt like an American spying on these Vietnamese people.”

That dual identity, of seeing both the peril and the promise of the United States as a world power – and seeing the pain within a family that was doing well in its new home – is the driving force behind his literary work, most notably in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Sympathizer,” now an HBO series.

“It’s been a long struggle to wrestle with the idea of the United States, its mythology, the American dream, which is so seductive to so many immigrants and refugees who come here,” he said during the Celebrating James Baldwin’s Centennial panel at the NBF. “And to be able to root out American mythology from within oneself is extremely difficult to do.”

Viet Thanh Nguyen. Photo: Hopper Stone.

Nguyen, 53, a MacArthur fellow and the Aerol Arnold chair of English at the University of Southern California, was onstage with novelist and professor Ayana Mathis. NPR’s Eric Deggans moderated the hourlong discussion, which covered Baldwin’s lasting influence on American society, literature, the LGBTQ+ movement and civil rights activism.

Nguyen focused on Baldwin’s international perspective during his time onstage, but in a separate interview he spoke about the role that libraries and reading played early on. After the upheaval of fleeing the war, his parents worked long days at their small grocery store. They were saving to educate their children, but they “struggled tremendously” and their long absences while working left young Nguyen adrift.

His “salvation,” as he puts it? The San Jose Public Library.

“It was the place where I went for stories and entertainment and fantasies and escape because I couldn’t afford to buy any books myself,” he said. “These books were free and they connected me to the world — a world beyond my parents’ grocery store, beyond San Jose — a world of books that were not written for me … but those books did connect with me and gave me the idea I could be a writer.”

From the beginning, he set a high standard of both academic and literary success. He figured that it would take him at least 20 years to learn how to write the books the way he wanted, full of history and social critique and irony and interconnected storylines that tied all these themes together. He attended a private high school and went to U.C. Berkeley, where he obtained two degrees and then a Ph.D. in English.

He had not read many books by Black American authors until university, but he was then greatly impressed by Baldwin and many others. He was so taken with Ellison’s “Invisible Man” that he would later name his first child Ellison and use the opening imagery of “Invisible Man” as the inspiration for the first page of “The Sympathizer.” (The Library preserves Ellison’s papers, including his personal library.)

“Invisible Man” starts like this: “I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids — and I might even be said to possess a mind.”

The first lines of Nguyen’s “The Sympathizer” are a clear homage: “I am a spy, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am a man of two minds. I am not some misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, although some have treated me as such.”

“The Sympathizer,” some two decades in the making, drew on Nguyen’s lived experiences, of what had happened to his home country and his family, but he was also drawing energy and parallels from Black American authors of the mid-20th century who were taking on political and social themes, such as Wright’s “Native Son,” Baldwin’s “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and Ann Petry’s “The Street.”

In his new life in America, Vietnam “wasn’t even a subject” in school, he said in a 2022 PBS interview, and the American culture he was exposed to — Hollywood films and books at the library — viewed Vietnamese people most often in “deeply racist and sexist ways” and “that was shocking for me.”

“I was looking for role models, and I was finding that in Asian American literature,” he told the NBF crowd. “But the other tradition that was really powerful for me was Black writers, Black literature. … It was really important for me to think through, ‘What does it mean to be a writer of color?’ Black writers are offering these arguments that they’re putting forth about the relative relationship of politics, putting literature into art … and it was a very fundamental debate. I think it shaped a lot of people and we’re still talking about that to a certain extent today.”

Since “Sympathizer” marked his literary debut nine years ago, Nguyen has published a second volume extending the story (and is working on the third book in the trilogy), a book of short stories, a nonfiction book on the Vietnam War, two children’s picture books and, most recently, a memoir. It’s called “A Man of Two Faces,” again emphasizing that sense of duality.

He lives with his family in Los Angeles and is delighted that there is a “tiny neighborhood library that’s so beautiful” just three blocks from their house. In a city of cars and freeways, it’s an easy walk.

His face lights up when he remembers this: His young daughter Simone went there on a recent day and saw his children’s book, “Simone,” prominently featured in the front window. She proudly took it to the librarian at the front desk, holding out the cover.

“‘That’s my name and my father wrote this book,’” he recounts her saying. Delighted, smiling, he adds: “And for me, that just brought everything home.”

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Kelsey Beeghly, Library’s Albert Einstein Fellow

Kelsey Beeghly, a science curriculum and assessment coordinator from Orlando, Florida, was the Library’s 2023–24 Albert Einstein distinguished educator fellow.

Tell us about your background.

I grew up in central Florida and earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Central Florida.

While at UCF, I taught physics to my fellow undergraduate students. Through this part-time job, I discovered how much I love teaching science and decided to become a science teacher.

After graduation, I moved to Brooklyn, New York, where I taught advanced placement environmental science, biology and chemistry for two years while earning my master’s degree in teaching with a dual certification in secondary science and special education.

My journey brought me back home to central Florida, where I transitioned to teaching life and physical science at the middle school level.

Then, I went back to UCF to earn my Ph.D. in science education. For three years, I taught science methods and content courses to undergraduates in UCF’s teacher education school while completing coursework and serving as a research assistant on a grant to support English learner education. Simultaneously, I worked as a high school administrator, leading curriculum and assessment practices.

What inspired you to come to the Library as an Einstein fellow?

When I discovered the Department of Energy’s Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship opportunity, which places STEM educators in federal agencies and congressional offices, I was fascinated.

My teaching experiences, as well as my Ph.D. program, alerted me to many of the systemic issues facing teachers and students in this country. Where better to learn more than the nation’s capital?

Immediately after meeting with the Professional Learning and Outreach Initiatives office last year, I knew the Library was the right fit for my fellowship placement. The team’s passion for use of primary sources to promote deeper understanding of the nature of science — what science is, how it works and how scientists operate within society — strongly resonated with me.

What resources at the Library have captivated you?

First, Chronicling America — I loved exploring its historical newspapers using every search term that popped into my head. I also loved reading “The Tradition of Science,” a compilation of landmark items that the Library holds from the history of Western science.

I really enjoyed searching through photographs in the digital collections, especially for curating a “Scientists and Inventors” free to use and reuse set. The Library has so many interesting pictures that represent the diversity of science but also shed light on societal norms that impacted who could participate in science for much of our nation’s history — the effects of which can be observed in STEM engagement today.

How will your experience this year affect your approach to education?

I have learned about so many federal resources freely available to educators, including the Library’s resources, and now see the Library itself as a huge fountain of knowledge.

I also have an appreciation for and awareness of all the possibilities for conducting research using the Library’s digitized collections from anywhere in the world. Any time I am seeking a historical perspective on an issue from now on, I will consult the Library’s website and its experts and encourage others to do the same.

What would you like STEM educators to know about the Library?

STEM educators need to know about all of the amazing things the Library has to offer. My own past teaching in grades 6–12 and of preservice teachers would have greatly benefited from incorporating the Library’s primary sources.

I’m very confident that every topic taught in a science classroom can be made more engaging by including a piece of history related to it, the people involved with it and its impact on society.

STEM educators could start with the Teaching with the Library blog, where I have shared some of my discoveries. Next, they might consult primary source sets available a the teacher’s page, then use the Library’s Ask a Librarian service and research guides to support themselves and their students in exploring topics.

I also want STEM educators to know about the science that takes place within the Library‘s Preservation Research and Testing Division. I’ve met the division’s scientists and learned about some incredible projects I plan to feature in my upcoming “Doing Science” series on the blog.

Teachers can bring these ideas into their classrooms and encourage students to investigate careers that combine a love of science with a passion for art or history.

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James McBride at the NBF: “Love is the greatest … novel ever written.”

James McBride, winner of the Library’s 2024 Prize for American Fiction, took the main stage at the National Book Festival last weekend, delighting a rapturous crowd with anecdotes and observations about his bestselling books and his remarkable writing career.

A Washington Post journalist early on, and a professional musician for years, McBride did not write his first book until his mid-30s — and that was the “The Color of Water,” a memoir that has sold millions of copies all over the world.

“I like people, I listen to people,” he said at Saturday’s event. “… and I happen to look to the kindness in people. And when you look to the kindness in people, you see their depth.”

He pulled a small notebook from a pocket to show he always carries one to jot down names, ideas and quotes he overhears in everyday conversation, which he then uses or approximates in his fiction.

“People are just handing me money when they talk,” he said.

It was that kind of wry remark, delivered with perfect comic timing, that delighted the audience through his nearly hourlong presentation. Smart, insightful and thoughtful, McBride got his biggest laughs when being down to earth. When asked by moderator Michel Martin of NPR how he was handling being the Fiction Prize winner and the festival’s marquee attraction, McBride — seated, with his legs crossed, on a raised stage in front of nearly 3,000 people — looked down and said, “Well, I wish I’d worn some longer socks so that people can’t see my ankles.”

A 66-year-old native New Yorker and a distinguished writer-in-residence at New York University, McBride went to New York City public schools, studied music composition at Oberlin Conservatory of Music and got his master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University.

After an impressive music career — he composed songs for Anita Baker and toured as a saxophone player for jazz singer Jimmy Scott — the success of “Water” led him to pursue writing full time. He has written eight books, most of them fiction. “The Good Lord Bird,” winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction, was a freewheeling retelling of John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. His most recent novel, “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store,” set in the Black section of a small Pennsylvania town in the 1930s, was awarded the 2023 Kirkus Prize for Fiction and named the 2023 Book of the Year by Barnes & Noble. His previous novel, “Deacon King Kong,” was an Oprah’s Book Club selection.

He was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama in 2015 for “for humanizing the complexities of discussing race in America.”

His books have “have pierced through American psyche and culture,” said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, introducing him on Saturday. “He connects diverse people in his thought-provoking and poignant art, taking us on an emotional joyride in his stories.”

An overflow crowd listens to James McBride at the National Book Festival. Photo: Shawn Miller.

“The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” is vintage McBride, telling a small-town story about people whose actions are sometimes questionable but whose humanity is not.

The narrative centers around a modest store run by a Jewish woman in the Black community called Chicken Hill on the outskirts of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, in the 1930s. Hardworking Black and Jewish people, ignored or insulted by the town’s white founders and leaders, get by as best they can.

Community life takes a turn when a 12-year-old orphaned, nearly deaf Black boy is blamed for assaulting a white doctor who is, as everyone knows, a leader in the local Ku Klux Klan. The child is sent to a horrific asylum for the mentally ill, drawing the cast of characters together.

The book grew from McBride’s teenage experiences working as a summer counselor at a camp for neuro-divergent children. He learned, he said on Saturday, that “disabled” people were actually marvelous observers of life around them, as nearly everyone discounted and ignored them.

“It changed my life,” he said of the experience, adding later: “If your job is to find the humanity in people, look to the differently abled.”

McBride, as he wrote about so poignantly in his now-classic memoir, was mostly raised by his mother, a Jewish woman who passed herself off as “light skinned” in their Black neighborhood. As a child, when he asked her what color God was, she replied, “the color of water,” giving the book its title and McBride his concept of universal acceptance.

“Love is the greatest,” he said in closing. “It’s the greatest novel ever written.”

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Riding a Wave with Kazu Kibuishi

This weekend at the Library’s National Book Festival, fans of Kazu Kibuishi’s epic Amulet series will have a chance to hear him read from his ninth and final book in the series, “Waverider” and talk about how he created the immersive world where his graphic novels are set.

Maya Shibayama, one of my favorite sixth graders, is a huge fan of the Amulet series and is great at explaining how captivating the series can be.

“I was so excited when Book 9 came out,” she said. “My mom wouldn’t give it to me until spring break since she knew I wouldn’t sleep or do homework until I was done reading it.”

Kibuishi will read a selection from “Waverider” and then will join fellow graphic novelist Vera Brosgol to talk about the characters, worlds and moods they create for their books in a panel called “I Built This World, Come Visit!”  Afterwards, he will sign copies of his books.

If you miss him on Saturday, look for a recording of his conversation with Vera in the coming days. It will be on the Library’s website and YouTube channel.

Maya and I wrote a few questions for Kazu, and he was nice enough to answer them for us.

Where do you get such cool ideas? How long does it take for you to write a new story?

I feel like most artists have an abundance of cool ideas! The difficult thing is choosing which cool ideas to spend a lot of time working on to turn into a book.  Deciding what to work on is often the toughest creative decision I have to face.

Are the characters in Amulet inspired by real people you know?

Very few of the characters are inspired by real people, but there are a handful of side characters that are definitely based on my  friends. Some of the characters definitely have my mannerisms, which I suppose can be expected.

Did you always know how you wanted the Amulet series to end? If not, when did you decide what the ending would be?

I had the ending of the series in mind from the start.  It’s one of the things that has remained consistent throughout.

When you are creating a new story, what comes first for you – the visual elements or the plot?

Both.  I think of images that tell a story, so the images are much like words in my mind.

What advice would you give to kids who wants to write or illustrate books or graphic novels of their own?

Just get started and don’t stop.  It takes a long time to get used to making books, and the more you do it, the better you get.  If you can become comfortable with the process of improving, there’s no limit to where that approach can take you.

What is your favorite food?

My favorite food is Japanese-style Western food (Yoshoku).  This includes stewed hamburger steak, chicken or pork katsu curry. I also love noodles like ramen, udon, soba, or somen.

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Catching a “Curveball” with Pablo Cartaya

Pablo Cartaya’s novels touch on themes of family, culture and community, so it was no surprise when my 11-year-old daughter Ellie connected with the young characters of his latest book, “Curveball.”

He’ll be at the National Book Festival this Saturday, reading from his book “Tina Cocolina: Queen of the Cupcakes,” and talking on a panel, “Sports and Why We Love Them: Graphic Novels with Pablo Cartaya and Hena Khan. Pablo and Hena will also sign copies of their books.

If you can’t attend, their conversation will be posted in a few days on the Library’s website and YouTube channel.

Ellie and I came up with some questions for Pablo about “Curveball,” as she loved the book.

“I really felt a connection to Elena and the pressure she felt to always work harder to be the best baseball player on the team,” Ellie said. “I don’t play baseball, but sometimes I get tired of the things I love because I want to be perfect at them … and I’m glad that Elena learned how fun it is to use her imagination!”

Here are our questions and Pablo’s answers.

What inspired you to write this story and what do you hope your readers take away from the book?

Have you ever felt pressure to perform? Have you ever felt like you were going to let someone you care about (a parent, a teacher, a coach) down if you didn’t succeed? When I was a kid, I felt that a lot. I played many sports growing up (basketball, soccer and baseball specifically) and my dad was the coach on many of my teams. My dad was an Olympian representing his country of Cuba, my dad is in the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame, my dad was recruited by a Major League Baseball team. That casts a really big shadow. And he was my coach! I was a pretty good athlete and even the leading scorer on a few of my teams, but I always worried that I was never going to live up to my dad’s success. It wasn’t anything my dad was doing, it was more the way I was thinking about that pressure. Then one day, I was with my grandfather after a baseball game in which I missed a ground ball and the opposing team scored a run and won the game. I was feeling really bummed. My grandfather told me, “You don’t look like you’re having fun out there, mijo.” And it was so hard to admit that I wasn’t having fun but my grandfather told me that I should tell my dad how I felt. So I did. What my dad said surprised me. He said, “You have to do things for you, not for anybody else.” I never realized he just wanted me to love to play. So when I was writing “Curveball” I thought about that experience.

How did you work with illustrator Miguel Díaz Rivas to create the illustrations that bring this graphic novel to life?

The incredible team at Disney asked me to write the script first and, well, to be perfectly honest, I was terrified. Yes, even after writing a whole bunch of books, writers still get scared to write. The reason I was so nervous was that I had never written a graphic novel before! But that’s the great thing about teams, you see, you work together to achieve a common goal. The team at Disney, led by my incredible editor, sent me guidelines and tips and emails of encouragement and before I knew it, I had written my very first graphic novel script! And when the script was sent over to Miguel, he really knocked it out of the park. Teamwork makes the dream work!

How is it different writing a graphic novel versus a chapter book?

The writer of the graphic novel (if they are not also the illustrator) is to give direction to the illustrator about how you want the story to unfold. It’s a collaboration between two art forms (creative writing and visual art) to tell a story. You have to give enough information to the illustrator to allow them to interpret the story. There’s a lot of trust involved and it was a great deal of fun. When I write a chapter book, the process is a little different. You have to rely on your storytelling to engage a reader. That has its own challenges, but like a graphic novel, when you do it well and a reader connects with the story you wrote, it’s an awesome feeling.

What do you think happened for after the book ended? Is there an epilogue for Elena?

I’ve written epilogues in other novels but hadn’t really thought about one for Elena.

 

What advice would you give to kids who wants to write a book of their own?

Remember three very important things: 1. Your voice matters. 2. Read as much as you can. 3. Revision is your friend.

 

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Annalee Newitz and “Weaponized Stories” at the National Book Festival

Stories can be a lot of things, as journalist and novelist Annalee Newitz writes in “Stories Are Weapons,” but in the end they are powerful instruments that can be used for good or evil, to comfort the afflicted or afflict the comfortable.

“The thing about stories is that they are emotional and oftentimes appeal to us on a personal level in a way that is very difficult for facts to do,” she said in a recent phone conversation. “They get used as a great system of conveying information within an emotional shell.”

The subtitle of her 2024 book is “Psychological Warfare and the American Mind,” and she’ll be discussing the subject with British author and journalist Peter Pomerantsev, whose “How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler” also came out this year. The two will present “Words at War: Misinformation Then and Now” at the Library’s National Book Festival in D.C. on Saturday, Aug. 24.

Both writers have a modern take on the issue — social media platforms continue to spread disinformation campaigns at lightning speed around the planet, infusing international conflicts and domestic cultural debates with a kinetic, off-balance energy.

“Methods of information warfare that seemed novel in 2016 are now part of our everyday lives,” Newitz, who uses they/them pronouns, writes. The nation has entered a period of “chaotic” terrorism, they observe, when campaigns on social media are designed to trigger someone into violence, but it’s impossible to predict who, when or where or exactly why.

Still, both writers acknowledge that this is a very new wrinkle in a very old game.

“All warfare is based on deception” is one of the most famous passages of “The Art of War,” the Chinese classic attributed to Sun Tzu about 2,400 years ago. Confusing your enemy about where, when and how you’ll attack is essential.

After the warfare is over, conquering nations have always written narratives that portray them as heroes, with their defeated foes as anything from misled enemies to barbaric hordes. They do not, of course, portray themselves as simply more ruthless, better armed and better organized combatants who got lucky on a particular day.

Instead, they create narratives — stories — that they or their cause has been ordained for power by a supernatural deity, or they are higher forms of human beings. These stories become the foundational myths, and very real cornerstones, of societies and civilizations.

Newitz, 55, who writes both science fiction and nonfiction, takes their story of American military psychological operations (“psyops”) from the 19th century forward. “Though World War I was the first time that psychological war was identified as such, the practice of combining propaganda and mythmaking with total war began with the Indian Wars.”

Pomerantsev, who was born in Ukraine and has written several books on propaganda (particularly of the Soviet variety) writes from more of an international perspective.

What’s striking to Newitz is that the American military’s techniques, once deployed at foreign targets, are now being used by domestic political and cultural groups against one another. American psyops moved into official existence in the late 1940s when an intelligence officer named Paul Linebarger wrote a manual called “Psychological Warfare” for the U.S. Army that became so influential that it is still used today.

Newitz observes that Linebarger also wrote science fiction under a pen name and was quite accomplished at “worldbuilding,” or creating a fictional universe that seems complete unto itself.

“The more I immersed myself in Linebarger’s work,” Newitz writes, “the more obvious it became that his skill as a science fiction writer was a crucial part of his success with military psyops. … Linebarger believed that words, properly deployed, were more powerful than bombs.”

Further propelled by the powers of advertising, with its calls to action in a few words or images, such psyops or disinformation campaigns gained new power as they blurred the lines between reality and fiction. In this way, Newitz says, current cultural warfare uses a troika of elements to wage disinformation: scapegoating, deception and threats of violence.

“These weapons are what separate an open, democratic public debate from a psychological attack,” they write.

Still, stories can also be used for greater inclusion and more open societies. Psychologist William Moulton Marston created Wonder Woman for DC Comics in 1941 as “psychological propaganda for the new type of woman.”

The superhero story of Diana Prince was perceived as action-based comic book heroine, not crude propaganda. Still, from Marston’s perspective, his campaign worked beyond his wildest dreams. Today, the character is a pop culture staple.

There are other positive campaigns, Newitz writes, such as the Southwest Oregon Research Project, which shows that local Native Americans did not disappear, as government authorities had long insisted, and that they were still part of the community.

Still, those battles are never fully won, Newitz writes, and won’t be over anytime soon: “… the culture wars over who counts as an American, or even as a human being, are far from over. They return, like repressed memories, to retraumatize us.”

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Gregory Lukow, Library’s Film Preservation Leader, Retires

Gregory Lukow, chief of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, retired July 31. He tells us about his career and future plans. 

Tell us about your background.

Born and raised on a farm in Nebraska, I studied broadcast journalism and English as an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska. My college jobs included photochemical processing of 16 mm news film I and my fellow students shot in the J school. I also disc jockeyed for the university radio station and the then most-powerful FM station in Nebraska, KFMQ. My English degree was achieved primarily by taking all the film courses that department offered.

Knowing farm life wasn’t for me, I moved to Los Angeles in 1975 and applied for grad school at UCLA. Happily, I was accepted. I obtained graduate degrees in film and television studies. My first experience with archival film programming was a founder of the student-run UCLA Cinematheque in 1979 showcasing prints from the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

In 1984, I began working at the American Film Institute’s National Center for Film and Video Preservation. I was there 14 years, the last five as director. I’m proud to have been a principal founder of the Association of Moving Image Archivists, in 1991, and to have served five terms as the association’s first elected secretary.

What brought you to the Library?

In 1998, the American Film Institute abolished the NCFVP, and for the next two years I worked at the UCLA Film & Television Archive. My primary responsibility there was to establish UCLA’s Moving Image Archive Studies program — the first such graduate degree offered in the U.S.

In 2000, I was hired as assistant chief in the Library’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division by division Chief David Francis. My first days on the job, in January 2001, were spent in Dayton, Ohio, where I stopped on my cross-country drive from Los Angeles to D.C. to meet the Film Lab and Nitrate Vault staff at the Library’s Motion Picture Conservation Center.

Francis retired in February 2001, and I served as de facto head of MBRS under acting Chief Diane Kresh, the director of Collections Services, just as the design of what was to become the Packard Campus was getting underway. In 2003, the Library conducted its search for a new chief, and I was immensely gratified to be selected.

What achievements are you most proud of?

Certainly, my first seven years when I was the Library’s lead representative in overseeing the design and construction of the Packard Campus, guiding one of the Library’s most advanced technological undertakings to its opening in 2007.

It was an extraordinary privilege to create a new national audiovisual archive and library as close as possible to the ideal while working with the architects and design engineers that David Packard’s Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) brought to the table and with individuals at the Architect of the Capitol and the Library, including the NAVCC staff. That yearslong effort was by far the most educational, challenging and fulfilling experience of my professional life.

What are some standout moments?

The July 2007 ceremony conveying the completed Packard Campus from PHI to the Library — with numerous members of Congress present — was the capstone moment of those first seven years. Also, the opportunity in 2014 to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on NAVCC’s work and copyright issues important to audiovisual preservation and access.

The live concerts we presented at Packard were immensely enjoyable: We hosted members of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (Roger McGuinn of the Byrds), the Country Music Hall of Fame (Connie Smith, accompanied by husband Marty Stuart) and the Songwriters Hall of Fame (Jimmy Webb).

Finally, last year’s inaugural Library of Congress Festival of Film & Sound was a fantastic opportunity to showcase the Library’s audiovisual preservation work, and the four-day festival marked the peak movie-going experience of my 24 years at the Library.

What’s next for you?

My wife, Rachel, and I won’t be leaving Culpeper soon. We’ve got a lot of downsizing to do, including preparing a range of collection materials I hope to donate to the Library.

My main retirement project will be organizing my photograph collection. In 1988, I started photographing old and surviving movie palaces and theaters around the world. In doing so, I began “collecting” U.S. highways and back roads, and I look forward to taking many more road trips with Rachel and adding more theaters to the collection. Thus far, I’ve photographed over 3,800 theaters. Over half of them were shot on 35 mm film between 1988 and 2003, so one of my main retirement projects will be to digitize those negatives.

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The (Newly Revealed) Wonders of a 16th Century Portolan Chart of the North American Coast

It’s not often that the Library has a chance to acquire a portolan chart — an early nautical map, hand drawn on animal skin, that explorers used to navigate the seas. Not many still exist, so the Library leaped at the chance last fall to acquire a circa 1560 portolan depicting the North American East Coast by Portuguese cartographer Bartolomeu Velho.

Extending from the coastline of what is now Texas, around the Gulf of Mexico to Florida then up the entire present-day East Coast, the original map and a high-resolution enhanced version, produced by the Preservation Research and Testing Division, are now on the Library’s website. The latter reveals previously illegible place names — including some of the earliest known uses of names by European explorers for locations on the Atlantic coast. The enhanced map, producing by multispectral imaging, illuminates things that the human eye cannot see. It’s the first time the Library has posted a PRTD-enhanced image.

“It’s exciting,” Fenella France, PRTD’s chief, said of the web availability of the image. “It is now a resource for scholars from anywhere.”

It required coordination between two Library’s divisions — Geography and Map and PRTD. PRTD’s work, said G&M cartographic acquisitions specialist Robert Morris, “added even more value to what was already a valuable chart.”

For more than 15 years, PRTD has used noninvasive techniques, chief among them multispectral imaging, to glean information from Library collection items that the human eye cannot see. Multispectral imaging involves digitally photographing an object at multiple wavelengths. Through imaging and subsequent processing of the data it generates, PRTD can obtain information about inks or colorants used in an object, for example, or detect a watermark that helps to date it. In some cases, an ink may almost melt away, revealing another ink below.

“It provides more information than our eyes can perceive because the camera can see in ultraviolet, and the camera can see in infrared,” said Meghan Hill, a PRTD preservation science specialist.

A close-up of the Velho portolan chart that reveals place names by using multispectral technology. Photo: Preservation Research and Testing Division.

Most famously, multispectral imaging at the Library confirmed in 2010 that Thomas Jefferson scrawled the word “citizens” over “subjects” in the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence to describe the people of the fledgling United States.

In the years since, PRTD has imaged hundreds of Library holdings using increasingly sophisticated instruments and techniques.

In this case, Morris asked PRTD to examine it in advance of purchase — PRTD often images prospective acquisitions to confirm (or not) that they coincide with the information vendors provide.

“I asked PRTD to verify that nothing was anomalous for a mid-16th-century chart,” Morris explained. “If there had been inks, for example, not used during the period, it might indicate doctoring.”

PRTD found nothing inconsistent with the vendor’s description but noted extreme fading of iron gall ink on certain areas. PRTD agreed, should G&M purchase the portolan, to do further processing of imaging data to enhance details. Morris was particularly interested in the place names along the coast, many too faded to discern.

Typical of charts of its kind, the portolan features toponyms, or place names, set at an almost perpendicular angle to the coast and limited geographical detail beyond the coast.

Once G&M purchased the chart, PRTD initiated in-depth analysis.

“The actual imaging might take a day,” France said. “It’s the processing to pull out the information that can take a couple of weeks or longer.”

Using specialized software, PRTD applies different hues, called false colors, to different components in an object and brings forward certain components while diminishing others. The team draws on techniques that complement multispectral imaging — infrared, reflectance and the X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy.

Infrared analysis provides data about the substrate of an item — parchment, for example — while reflectance spectroscopy gives rise to details about color components within the visible spectrum, including plant-based materials. X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy offers information about trace metals in pigments, such as copper, iron or mercury.

“Essentially, what we’re doing is using different types of light to identify materials,” Hill said.

These techniques showed not only place names that had been illegible, but a scale, numbers and flags of European claimants to regions.

“Processing made them pop out more, made the details more visible,” Hill said.

Scholars mine such details, Morris said. “Place names, for example, can be used for dating,” he explained. “And when they are referenced beyond cartography, they can verify that people were at a certain location.”

The Velho portolan made its way to the Library by way of a circuitous route, to say the least.

It was found in 1961 — roughly 400 years after its creation — at Rye Castle Museum in Sussex, England. By then, however, the entire chart was no longer intact, having been cut into quarters and repurposed for its vellum, or animal skin.

The segment the Library purchased — the upper-left quadrant — was used to bind a 17th-century English manuscript before being identified as a portolan and separated from the book, according to Portuguese cartography experts Armando Cortesão and Avelino Teixerada Mota.

The Rye Castle Museum holds another quadrant of the chart. The two others “appear to be lost to mankind,” Morris said.

When the Philip Lee Phillips Society, G&M’s donor group, heard that the Library was considering purchasing the portolan last year, the society’s board quickly voted to contribute, Morris said.

Already, scholars are researching the chart, drawing on the rich details PRTD uncovered. Morris knows of at least one major article scheduled to publish within the year.

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Kwame Anthony Appiah Awarded Kluge Prize

This is guest post by the Office of Communications media relations team.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, the internationally recognized philosopher, scholar and author, will receive the 2024 John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today. The prize recognizes individuals whose outstanding scholarship in the humanities and social sciences has shaped public affairs and civil society.

Appiah is the Silver professor of philosophy and law at New York University. He is internationally recognized for his contributions to the study of philosophy as it relates to ethics, language, nationality and race.

Appiah also writes “The Ethicist” in The New York Times Magazine, a column and newsletter that explores ethical approaches to solving interpersonal problems and moral dilemmas.

“Dr. Appiah’s philosophical work is elegant, groundbreaking and highly respected,” Hayden said. “His writing about race and identity transcends predictable categories and encourages dialogue across traditional divisions. He is an ideal recipient for the 2024 Kluge Prize, and we were thrilled to select him for this award.”

The Library is developing programming on the theme of “Thinking Together” that will showcase Appiah’s work for a public audience.

Appiah earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and a doctorate from Cambridge University. Over the years, he has taught at Yale, Cornell, Duke, Harvard and Princeton universities.

He is the author of more than a dozen books, including academic studies of the philosophy of language, a textbook introduction to contemporary philosophy and “In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture,” considered a canonical work in contemporary Africana studies.

Since the 1990s, Appiah’s work has been widely regarded as having deepened the understanding of ideas around identity and belonging, concepts that remain deeply consequential.

Debra Satz, who served on the Library’s Scholars Council, called Appiah a “giant who influenced the academy and beyond.”

Satz is the Vernon R. and Lysbeth Warren Anderson dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University and the Marta Sutton Weeks professor of ethics in society.

“His work is of unusually broad scope, ranging from technical work in the philosophy of language to core ethical issues about identity to questions of the value of work,” Satz said. “What unites his writings on all of these diverse topics is a consistent wide-ranging humanity and a courageous refusal to fit his views into any narrow boxes.”

Scholars Council member Martha Jones, the Society of Black Alumni presidential professor and professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, said Appiah’s work is of “tremendous breadth of interest, expertise and engagement, from scholarly to serious popular writing.”

“Kwame Anthony Appiah moves effortlessly between academic and public discussions on difficult topics, such as race, identity, privilege and power,” said Timothy Frye, the Marshall D. Shulman professor of post-Soviet foreign policy at Columbia University and Scholars Council member. “His academic work is rooted in philosophy, but the range of topics that he has addressed in his research and public writing is astonishing.”

Frye further noted that that “while many scholars are satisfied probing hard and important questions without taking the next step of offering guidance for how to solve them, Appiah is unafraid to offer solutions that recognize the complexity of the problems under study.”

Other books by Appiah include  “The Ethics of Identity,” “Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers,” “Experiments in Ethics,” “The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen,” “Lines of Descent: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Emergence of Identity,” “As If: Idealization and Ideals,” and “The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity.”  He was coauthor of “Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race” with Amy Gutmann.

Appiah has also co-edited volumes with Henry Louis Gates Jr., including “Africana: The Encyclopedia of African and African-American Experience.”

Appiah is the current president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has served as president of the PEN America Center, as a member of the advisory board of the National Museum for African Art, as chair of the board of the American Council of Learned Societies and as president of the Modern Language Association and of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association.

Awarded every two years, the Kluge Prize highlights the value of researchers who communicate beyond the scholarly community and have had a major impact on social and political issues. The prize comes with a $500,000 award.

Appiah joins a prestigious group of past prizewinners, including, most recently, historian George Chauncey, a trailblazer in the study of American LGBTQ+ history; Danielle Allen, renowned scholar of justice, citizenship and democracy; and historian Drew Gilpin Faust, former president of Harvard University.

Hayden selected Appiah from a short list of finalists following a request for nominations from scholars and leaders all over the world and a three-stage review process by experts in and outside of the Library.

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Eliot’s Bible

This is a guest blog by María Peña, a writer-editor in the Office of Communications. It also appears in the July-August issue of the Library of Congress Magazine.

After arriving in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1631, English Puritan minister John Eliot made history not only with his steadfast mission to convert Native Americans to Christianity but also for his evangelical method: translating the Bible into the Wampanoag language of the region’s Algonquin tribes.

Eliot believed Indigenous communities would be more receptive to the message of Christianity if the holy scriptures were written in their language, also known as Natick. He learned the previously unwritten language and spent years translating the Geneva Bible into it, getting significant help from Native Americans such as James Printer and John Nesutan, according to the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Printed in Cambridge between 1660 and 1663, the Eliot Indian Bible today represents a landmark in printing history: It was the first Bible printed in North America in any language.

Eliot was a pivotal figure among the Puritans. He helped settle the intertribal communities of Christian converts, called “praying towns,” that dotted the New England landscape between 1646 and 1675. The establishment of these communities — 14 in total — was part of an attempt to impose Puritan rules, mores and lifestyles on recent Indigenous converts.

Eliot’s efforts to convert more Native Americans ultimately failed, in part because of bubbling animosity between white Colonists and the Wampanoags. And most copies of his Bible were destroyed during King Philip’s War (1675-1676), a conflict that took a toll on the region’s Indigenous population. A second edition of the Eliot Bible was published in 1685 — the edition held by the Library today.

In recent decades, the Wampanoag nation has used the Eliot Bible as a tool to help resurrect its ancestral language, which declined soon after the Mayflower Pilgrims arrived and went extinct in the 19th century.

Founded by MIT-trained linguist Jessie Little Doe Baird in 1993, the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project uses the Eliot Bible and archival records to bring the language back to Wampanoag households, one student at a time.

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