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By globalistgirl, on October 9th, 2007

Books as a cross-continental point of comfort

My mother sends me an email stream of articles from various news media almost daily. Today’s single article was about public libraries and respect and love for books. Since both of us are avid readers, I thought that was why she sent me the link. However, at the end I realized she had double motives:

“Och han [Alberto Manguel]tror att han vet varför böcker blev så livsnödvändiga. Hans pappa var diplomat så familjen flyttade runt i hela världen. Och den unge Alberto Manguel behövde en fast punkt för att känna sig trygg.

–Eftersom platserna ändrades och människorna byttes ut blev det som var konstant mina böcker. Jag minns hur jag kunde komma hem på kvällen och öppna en bok och bli så glad för att samma text var där på samma sida.

Han ler brett vid minnet.

–Så böcker har alltid varit med mig.”

Translation: And he [Alberto Manguel] thinks that he knows why books became so important for him. His father was a diplomat, so the family moved all over the world. The young Alberto Manguel needed something steady to hold on to. “Because the places varied and the people changed, the only thing that was constant were my books. I remember how I could come home at night and open a book and be delighted that the same text was there on the same page.” He smiles widely at the memory. “So books have always been with me.”

Not only do I recognize that in myself, I know another TCK who also used books as a steady touchingstone. Funny that I should get sent this article today, when yesterday I grieved my loss of science as a similar point of comfort. Many of the books I read were popular science and math books. I guess we all have our points of comfort that come with us from one continent to the other. I wonder if books is a common one? For me, it was very natural, because my mother actively bought books in my three mother tongues to help me speak and use all three correctly and separately. I had a library by the age I was six. It always came with me. Which books to bring to China was a hard and much discussed decision. We weren’t entirely sure what might get taken in customs, but certainly didn’t want to bring only light-hearted novels either. (If anyone needs a tip in that department, it seems that they do not block smaller languages as effectively as bigger ones. If it’s in English and forbidden, they won’t miss it. You have a better shot with smaller languages, probably because they have less translators for those.) Perhaps a higher than average percentage of TCKs are avid readers for the same reasons that I, my friend and Alberto Manguel are?

October 9th, 2007 | Tags: , | Category: Distant Proximities, Third Culture | 1892 comments

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