The Human Library

[Stacia]

https://humanlibrary.org/

 

https://twitter.com/Back_dafucup/status/1398138598633791489?s=20

 

[Eos]

I love this concept, but the semantic imagery of "borrowing" a person feels weird.  Maybe the legacy of convict leasing comes to my American mind more than it would to the Danes.

[Farrar]

I saw this posted elsewhere and had similar thoughts to Harpymom. Maybe "check out" a person would work better - the way you check out a book, but obviously check out can also mean to investigate. But who knows what the word even is in Danish or whether it has the same linguistic overlapping meanings or associations as in English and the US. I love the idea.

[Momto6inIN]

I really like the idea of listening to different people's life stories! But the idea that my (or anyone else's life story) could be reduced to a one word adjective kinda makes me want to puke 🤮 and seems to be in complete opposition to the idea that we want to get to know people more fully.

[Farrar]

Oh, huh. The single word doesn't bother me. It just seems like a teaser.

I took a storytelling class once where they did this thing where they had you tell the same story in 5 minutes, in 1 minute, and then in less than 30 seconds. It's interesting to distill things down further and further. 

Of course, when the single word categorizes the person the way those do, that could be stigmatizing and that's uncomfortable.