Libraries should be “ringfenced and protected” to ensure that all children have access to books, the author Malorie Blackman has said.
“I lived in my local library as a child,” Blackman, who was children’s laureate from 2013 to 2015, told an audience at the Hay literary festival.
“I wouldn’t be talking to you now if it wasn’t for my local library. Libraries being closed and librarians being laid off, it’s such a wrong thing to do. This government’s always talking about social mobility, equalising, making a level playing field between people. Well, one of the things that should be ringfenced and protected then is libraries.
“They saved my life. They are the reason I became a writer. The librarians got to know me and they recommended books like Jane Eyre, saying read this. And so it just breaks my heart that they’re not available.”
Blackman recalled appearing on a panel with an MP “who said we don’t need libraries any more because we have Amazon. First of all, not everyone has a smart device to read the books, the books are not free, and libraries are a great equaliser in that you can be rich, you can be poor, you can be in between but they are available to everyone.
“The idea of having a central library that needs a bus journey or train journey to get there – I couldn’t have done that, I did not have that bus fare, I walked to my library and back and I was happy to do so. I just think there are an awful lot of people in places of power who don’t have a clue. And that makes me despair quite frankly.”
Blackman was speaking on a panel with Stormzy, the acclaimed rapper who established #Merky Books five years ago to publish books by under-represented writers. The imprint last year published Blackman’s memoir Just Sayin’, in which she recounted her experiences of racism, sexual assault, sickle cell anaemia and repeated miscarriages.
“Writing it was much harder than I thought it would be. It was daunting and challenging. It meant reliving painful moments. These are the things I have been through and survived,” she said.
Blackman grew up in south London, the daughter of parents who arrived in the UK from Barbados in 1962, part of the Windrush generation. Her first book was published after 82 rejections. She now has about 70 titles to her name.
Stormzy told the audience that #MerkyBooks was established to publish “black people, brown people, marginalised groups”. But, he added, black people were “not a monolith, we are multi-faceted”.
Writing lyrics and literature was about “finding your voice, your style … understanding that your truth is enough.”
Earlier, the multiaward-winning pop star Dua Lipa told a Hay audience that reading Blackman’s book Noughts and Crosses as a 10-year-old “kickstarted my love of reading”.
Books had the power to transform lives, and to escape into a new world, she said. She consciously put down screens in favour of reading books, she said, and when on tour created a reading group with her dancers and technicians.
This year she started her Service95 book club for fans because of her “love of reading, sharing, and the sense of community behind that. Everyone’s invited – I’m excited to get more people involved in reading.”
