Hannah Pittard’s Letter to Librarians

In IF YOU LOVE IT, LET IT KILL YOU, Hannah Pittard tells a refreshingly irreverent story about art, desire, domesticity, freedom, and the intricacies of the twenty-first-century female experience.

In her letter to librarians, Hannah reflects on the importance of libraries, and how intertwined they are within our communities and our world.

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I have many library stories. At least some portion of every book I’ve ever published has been written in a library. But one of my favorite stories about a library has nothing to do with books, but rather with the librarian herself.

In 2010, just after I’d sold my first novel but before it was published, I moved from Charlottesville to Chicago to accept my first full-time job as a teacher. One of the first things I did after unpacking was take the red line to the Chicago Public Library to register for membership. I was 29 years old.

When the librarian handed me my card—I will never forget this—she said, “Welcome to the Chicago Public Library. Welcome to Chicago.”

What I loved (love!) most about the simplicity and profundity of that librarian’s salutation was the implication that a city and its literature go hand in hand; that to be a citizen is to engage with the multifarious stories of others. I couldn’t agree more.

Why do we read? Why do we feel compelled to talk about and share our favorite books? We do this, I think, to make connections—with each other, with ourselves, with the world.

I know I’m preaching to the choir when I say that libraries promote literacy, they encourage engagement, they foster knowledge. Most of all, libraries support communities, and what is a writer without a community?

This is just to say, thank you for welcoming my books into your world.

And may I propose a new motto?

Welcome to the library. Welcome to the world.

Yrs,

Hannah Pittard