Photo from the Walter Patrice Collection, Dutchess County Historical Society.
Using the African School Mobile Library - after consultation and 'contract' signing - a wide range of reading on Africa, the Caribbean and African America, past and present, fiction and non-fiction, including an art section, can be used in generating better mental health. This is the foundational content for Black Bibliotherapy. Sessions will consist of discussion, African Studies, readings and suggested reading. The sessions carry interactive exercises, to enhance literacy or cultural knowledge.
The contract is an agreement between the client and I, concerning venue, day and time of session/s, or in Covid time, online; the consultation also, in present time, can be online.
I'm looking forward to working with individuals and in group settings; in schools, children's homes, mental health hospitals, the military, prisons and wherever bibliotherapy can help. (Natty Mark Samuels is a member of both the IFLA - International Federation of Library Associations - and CILIP: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Specialists.)
Both consultation and sessions have the same fee of £30 hourly. To enquire please email: bantudub06@gmail.com
The Delaney Project.
This is the bibliotherapy aspect of the African School Mobile Library. Here are its six points of Black Bibliotherapy.
1.Gain knowledge of Sadie Delaney
Gain the necessary knowledge of Sadie Delaney, one of the monumental figures of bibliotherapy. Beginning her use of books for healing in the legendary 135th St. Library in New York, she developed it further, during thirty-four years of work at the Tuskegee Veterans Hospital, in Alabama.
2.Celebrate the birthdays of the pioneers
Celebrate through research, the pioneering librarians past and present, such as Regina Andrews and Clara Stanton Jones - and from the present, Gertrude Mulindwa and Sally Njie.
3.Build up your own collection
Build up your own or family collection of Black literature, by frequenting charity shops and regional book fairs, as well as bookshops and online links. Collect what the local and central libraries do not have and to lend what you collect.
4.Encourage libraries to stock Black literature.
Encourage more use of libraries – school and local - by those of African-descent, by working towards Willis Richardson being on the shelves, as well as Arthur Miller; a celebratory event for Soyinka, alongside one for Shakespeare; a display about Claude McKay, as well as T.S.Eliot.
5.Promotelocal poets.
Promote local poets and organise readings of their work, whether they be performance poet, rapper, singer-guitarist or Rasta chanter. Encouraging the spoken word, as in the firelight stories of old; in youth and inter-generational settings. And supporting endeavours to have their work published and circulated, via community initiatives.
6.Explore the potential of journaling.
Explore the potential for shedding some of the weight of things, by writing. Respite while writing and a sense of relief, at completion. Sometimes, we can create own own remedy.