A place where people are on loan to readers

Would you consider yourself an open book? Whether you’re a storyteller or a listener, everyone was welcome at USC’s “Human Library” event.

Upon entering the event, attendees decided to be a “book” or a “reader.” The books then created a title for their story and based on those titles, the readers approached the books they found interesting.

Boya Zhang, an economics and digital social media major, was among those who opted to be a “book” for the event and her story was titled “Everything Sucks!!!”, a tale about her stolen car. She had to deal with a lot — the police, the paperwork of filing a complaint, getting a rental car and then an accident on top of school—in the course of two weeks.

The Human Library project was launched 23 years ago in Copenhagen, Denmark, with a mission to “unjudge someone” and challenge stigma and stereotypes. The organization hosts events for communities across the world, hoping to create a space where “difficult questions are expected, appreciated and answered.”

Graduate student Sophia Han, who helped organize the event, said the concept encourages students to leave surface level conversations behind.

Like Skylar Pak’s story of taking the leap. The junior studying communications, philosophy, politics and economy took her place as a book at the event. She titled her story “A New Chapter”, which chronicled her journey transitioning from gymnastics to track.

“I did gymnastics from when I was 4 years old to 16, so it was a good 12 years and I did it competitively,” she said. “So I was in the gym for 36 hours per week … And it was my whole life.”

She said she loved it most times, so she stuck with it. But being a gymnast brought a lot of injuries and she eventually felt it was time to move on. But it took her four years to make that decision. Especially after realizing that people identified her only by her sport.

“My sister and I would go see family and friends that we hadn’t seen in a while, and they’d look at her and be like, ‘You’re the swimmer.’ And then they look at me and they would say, ‘You’re the gymnast.’ And I’m like, are our identities really just tied to our sports?”

She didn’t want to call it as if she were quitting because she had given a lot to it. But when Pak began training for track, something clicked.

“I feel like I really just found myself again because I’d started to lose everything towards the last couple of years as a gymnast, so this is like the new chapter and the biggest and best chapter I could’ve hoped for,” Pak said.

Han said the event gives people an opportunity to be a storyteller or a listener and could help people who usually struggle socially.

“Instead of reading books, you read people,” Han said, “and by reading we mean having conversations with them, and not just random conversation, but like engaging and deep and meaningful kinds of conversations.”

Han also said that one of the major goals of the event was to eliminate preconceived notions about one another.

“By having engaging conversations with them and then just listening to them talk about their stories and stuff, you just have a different perspective of who this person is,” Han said.