Years before founding the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora (LOATAD) in 2017, essayist and playwright Sylvia Arthur immersed herself in the work of writers of African descent and began collecting hundreds of books. Between Brussels and London, to Kumasi and finally Accra, Arthur embarked on an unexpected journey which began with 1400 of her own books to expand local access to contemporary, culturally-relevant literature by Black writers across borders. Since opening, the Library's extensive collection is home now to over 4,000 books and offers accommodation for writing residents at the appropriately named ‘Literary Oasis of Accra’.
The Library hosted its first symposium in April, which featured leading archival and librarian thinkers and practitioners in a culmination of the Library’s Digital Residency. The symposium was the first in a series of events marking LOATAD’s fifth anniversary in December. AMAKA spoke to Arthur to learn more about the library’s mission and work to address literacy challenges in Ghana and what she’s learned throughout her journey as a library founder and literacy activist.
What book are you currently reading? What books/authors do you find yourself revisiting/re-reading over time? How have these titles held you over the years?
I'm reading lots of different things at the moment because I hardly ever read one book at a time. I dip in and out of lots of different things, so now I'm trying to think what books I have on my bedside cabinet. But in terms of the other question, I'll say Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, which I absolutely love. I often find it difficult to revisit books once I've read them but that book says so much to me about the impact of colonialism. Not just in the Caribbean, because obviously she's writing about Antigua, but in Ghana and other African countries.
One of the first things she mentions in the book is a library that was destroyed in the 1970s, a library named after some “great” statesman. And even today, it hasn't been rebuilt. It was destroyed and it hasn't been rebuilt. And that to me says so much about where we are as people. Even though it's about the Caribbean, it applies generally to how we see culture or how we don't see culture and how we value culture and what it means to us.
What are your earliest memories of reading, the works of African and African diaspora writers specifically?
I've always been a reader; I remember my earliest memories of books and reading. It's definitely when I was about three and a new shopping mall near where we lived opened that had a bookshop. I used to go to the mall with my mom and there was a children's play area and all the children would want to be left in the play area and I'd want to go to this bookstore because I've just always been fascinated by books and reading. That was something that was definitely encouraged by my parents; there were always lots of magazines and newspapers around the house and books as well.
In terms of African literature, I didn't actually grow up with a lot of African and diaspora literature. I was brought up in London in the eighties and when I was in school, in West Sussex just outside London, there were no Black writers in the curriculum. I actually grew up reading a lot of African American writers, like Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison, because there weren’t that many Black British writers whose publications were accessible. At that time, they definitely weren't in our curricula — there were definitely no African writers in our curricula.
I discovered African writers when I was in my early to mid-twenties, which really intensified when I moved to Brussels from London for work. I didn't really know anybody in Brussels and I started to buy lots of books and read lots of books. Brussels is a very transient city; you have lots of people who come from all over Europe and the world to work in Brussels for short periods of time. They buy lots of books and they can't take them with them, so they give them to a secondhand bookshop and I used to go there and buy all their seconds. And there were loads and loads of different writers from different places. And that's where I think it really started to solidify for me and not just African writers, but I would say Indian writers as well. Turkish writers you know, writers from all over.
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How did this catalyze your journey as a Pan-African bibliophile, library founder, and literacy activist?
I think that's interesting because literally I was just talking about this, because we do a guided tour of the library and it takes about 90 minutes. And on that tour, I go through the different collections in the library and talk about the writers and the connections between writers from Africa, the Caribbean and Black Europe and how they are all connected specifically to Ghana, and Africa generally. At the end of this tour, loads of people say that they didn’t know most of what I just told them. I tell them that's nothing to be ashamed of because we're all learning together. I've had to teach myself what it means to have literature that belongs to us and that's for us — and I definitely did not know that when I was growing up.
I often give an example of a friend of mine who was born and raised in Ghana and we're the same age. And he can quote to you like the whole first page of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and I can quote to you the whole first page of Shakespeare's Macbeth. And I think that just symbolizes everything about my education in the West and his in Africa. And that's not to say that the African education system or the Ghanaian education system is perfect as there are lots of issues with it even today. But I do think that we are all on this journey and sometimes it looks different for us all. I feel, in a way, it's my duty to spread this knowledge and share it with others, but not in a way that makes them feel like they are lacking or inferior because we can all learn this — it's just a matter of accessibility.
"I had already felt that kind of alienation from literature at school and can only imagine how it feels to be a Black child in a Black country, surrounded by white books"
As your book collection grew over time, as the books began to grow in number in your homes in London and Accra, when did you know it was time to embark on decolonizing knowledge access, preservation, and dissemination?
You know, there's been a lot of debate about the word decolonizing and whether it's the word that we should use or not, because it centres the colonizer. The phrase ‘of being a decolonized library’ means inherently that you are against something or you're centring something, and I totally understand that interpretation of it. However, I came up with the idea for this library in 2011, when I was living in Brussels and I was collecting all these books and reading all these books [that I] outgrew the space that I was in — I couldn't fit them in my flat anymore. So, I began to ship them to my mom's house in Kumasi. Every time I would come and visit her and see these books, I thought these books were being wasted, just sitting here.
If you go to any public library in this country, the shelves are filled with books that are not culturally relevant to anybody here, let alone the children who are supposed to read them. There's no kind of curation that's gone into these libraries. All of the books have been donated/dumped by Western charities and dumped on a shelf. The assumption is if you read these books, you'll be smart. And obviously that's not it, we know that's not it. I had already felt that kind of alienation from literature at school and can only imagine how it feels to be a Black child in a Black country, surrounded by white books. I felt like this was something that children, that all people could benefit from — that's where the idea for the library came. I saw a need, I think that need still exists. I hope that more people curate libraries, not just fill them with books that have no relevance to the people whatsoever. I think that's more detrimental than helpful.
What have you learned throughout this journey? How has your relationship with both the local community and the larger, global community (via digital engagement) become a larger movement to redefine reading culture?
I would love to say that I planned all this but I didn't. I just started something that I loved doing and I think other people recognized that passion and came on board. Most of the international members of the library are from the diaspora. They tend to be African American and they understand the importance of what we are doing here. These are [the] people who may never come here. They may never take up that membership for themselves, but they want to support the cause. For that, I'm really grateful.
There are issues when Ghanaian diasporans return to Ghana and I have been met with some resistance from people who still don't know me. They don't wanna know me because they think I'm from the diaspora and that I’ve just imposed myself in Accra with this library. However, I've been surprised at how well received the library has been overall, here and across the diaspora. But we started in this one room office; we're now in a big two story house and the idea was always to make it a place where people feel like they could come home to. We're all connected through literature; we're all connected over generations through ancestry, through culture, through history, through so many things. I think when people come here, that's what they take away most[ly], a feeling of connection beyond anything else. And if that's what I've been able to do, then I'm happy with that for sure.
What has brought you the most joy since founding the LOATAD? What are you most proud of when you reflect on the Library’s continued commitment to the literature and knowledge production of Africa and the African diaspora?
Definitely opening our Little LOATAD at Gem Star School in Ashaiman in September 2018. The school itself was founded by a woman called Auntie Grace, who used to be a teacher in the Ghana Education Service. I met her and this school was a skeleton of a building. There were no windows, no doors, and hardly any books in [it] but she started it because the community is so underserved and she and the teachers have so much love for the children, and belief and pride in their work. She showed me this small room that would later become our Little LOATAD. We sponsored the renovation of the room and donated the books. I've seen children who were reluctant readers transformed into children, who now when I go there, ask when I’m going to bring more books because they've read them all and they've outgrown that little library space. And that's definitely where the joy is because that's where the impact has been most felt, I think. And that's definitely the best work that we do, our outreach and community engagement.
What are you looking forward to in the future? What can readers look forward to from the Library?
One of the things that people don't know about us is that we're not just a library. In fact, I think the library's the least of what we do. We actually do a lot of literary projects and literary research. We've had our women's oral archive project, which is divided into two strands. One of them is called Women Reading Women, which is a crowdsourced audio archive of African women stories read by African women. We put out a call to our community on social media and asked our followers who are African women to read five minutes of an extract from a book by an African woman writer from their country, so that we can hear it in the voice that it was originally written in. We’ve featured writers from Botswana, Morocco, and all over the continent.
The other part of it is called Women Speaking Women, which focuses on the unwritten or oral stories of Ghanaian women, specifically women over the age of 60 who are living along the coastal regions of Ghana. We are a library in Africa, in Ghana, specifically where oral tradition is central to our cultures. We bring these stories into the library, bringing orality into an elite setting like a library. These women, with their permission, allow us to gather, store, and share their stories. You can listen to them on headphones. We also have the translations as well. They speak in their native languages and provide translations into English.
Any last thoughts, messages, love notes?
I'd like to leave a love note for my team because I don't do this alone. There are about 10 or 12 of us who have come together and we are passionate about what we do. And they are passionate about what they do and they have backed me up 100 percent. This has not been an easy year in many respects and still, they have done remarkably well. I definitely thank them for their work.
Also my mom, who I have turned into a book collector by force. Most of the books in the library come from the United Kingdom and from the United States as well. She receives all the books for me and then ships them to me in Ghana.
And to everybody who has been supportive. This all started four years ago in a really small one room location and it's because of the support that we've had from loads of people, particularly people in the diaspora, that we've been able to build to what we have become and we are growing even more! I'm just always surprised and happy that people are interested in the work we do.