The Department of English conducted an inaugural Human Library session on the 15th March 2023 with a talk on Mixed Heritage and the larger issue of Racism. The invited Human Book was Mr. Salim Zothanpuia who spoke of his personal experiences as the child of a mixed marriage between a Mizo mother and a Kashmiri father, and his struggles with his cultural and racial identity in the relatively closed confines of Mizo society.
The Human Library is a an international organization founded in 2000 in Denmark which uses a library analogy of lending people rather than books. It specifically aims to change people's prejudices, preconceptions and stereotyping through dialogue. The English Department is incorporating the concept with some modifications to provide experiential learning and student enrichment since literature is all about human life and characters. Instead of reading and studying characters in a book, the students are introduced to real-life characters and their real-life-stories.
The program was attended by 59 students from the 6th semester and a number of faculty members. A sudden storm and power outage caused some initial disruption but the program was eventually smoothly carried out in the Conference Hall.
