ALSC President’s Program: Grassroots Leader Librarianship

Abstract

I had never thought about being a leader of any sort. Leadership wasn’t any part of my aspiration growing up. I come from a working-class family. Both my parents spent their childhoods running between shelters, away from the American airplanes dropping bombs on Japanese military bases in Taiwan. World War II interrupted their elementary education and thrusted them into a life of blue-collar workforce long before they were ready for adulthood. While they cared about their children’s education, the necessity to keep our family above the water meant that we the children had no role model for what career we could dream of and how far we could reach for our future.