Stories by the Living Library took over the Cave

Starting at 11 a.m. on April 9, 2024, the Living Library encased the D.P. Culp Student Center Cave. Students, faculty and alum gathered together to share stories from their lived experiences.

For the second year, the Pride Center, Women and Gender Resource Center, International Buccaneer Buddies and Student Wellness gathered to organize the event to celebrate and connect people with diverse and unique lived stories.

For the three-hour event the 10 to 15 “living books” could be “checked out” by visitors. These books were speakers who would tell the story of one or more of their lived stories and experiences.

(Contributed/ETSU)

Organizer, Bethanie Dye, Dr. Patricia Robertson Pride Center coordinator, participated as a book and told of their experiences as well.

“My chapters were ‘Young and in a Wheelchair,’ ‘Invisible Illnesses,’ ‘LGBT’ and ‘Was it a Cult,’” they laughed as they continued to describe their “chapters” or experiences they retold.

Dye described how one of the main goals of the Living Library is to highlight how unique and unbelievable people’s lives can be.

“We heard so many things that you wouldn’t believe were real if these people weren’t telling you they had lived them,” Dye said.

Dye also explained that in organizing and selecting the books the group wanted to display a diversity of experiences for visitors.

Dye described growing up in a small primarily white and Christian community and how important it was to them to have a diversity of experiences that they personally could not have lived.

“We are hoping to expand next year. We want to continue including students from other nationalities and members of the LGBTQ community as well as the disabled community, but we also want to involve more religious experiences and to actually involve more local Appalachian experiences as well,” Dye explained.

They are hoping to expand next year not just in size but also to involve more of Johnson City as well. They hope for this to become a story telling event that people come from around the area to experience and participate in.