This was the first work I engaged in around libraries, post–library work, that I felt positive about. I was learning how to exist in the world as a former librarian and not a working one. Nine years of my life—most of my adulthood—had been focused on becoming and being a librarian, and I had wanted to abandon that knowledge and experience when I arrived in California, to be a student and a writer only. I had wanted a clean separation between the two, and I thought, if anything, the width of the country could probably achieve that. But the library and what I had seen and learned there showed up
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