Freedom Season at Carpe Librum

FREEDOM SEASON

Memorial Day – Paying tribute to those who gave their lives fighting for the freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights

Pride Month – Honoring the LGBTQ+ community that has contributed so much to American society while being forced to live on the outskirts of it

Juneteenth – Commemorating the day the United States Army made the public announcement in Galveston that all enslaved people in the United States were free

Independence Day – Celebrating the day the United States of America declared its independence from Colonial England

As I was trying to come up with succinct reasons that each of these holidays mean so much to Carpe Librum’s Freedom Season, the image that kept coming to my mind was joy in the midst of struggle.

 Joy.

When each of these events carries so much weight in our national history.

Memorial Day, when we honor men and women who died in active military service… a day that, theoretically, should be about mourning their loss, but has become a celebration of the freedoms their deaths have bought us.

Pride Month, while full of color and glitter and parades, highlights the fact that something as simple as who you love is often still seen as a reason for discrimination.

Juneteenth is marked by Black American communities with fireworks and cookouts, friends and family—as it should be. But it marks a moment in history that should not have had to happen, and our nation still has not reckoned with that.

Independence Day is our most American of holidays, but it marks the beginning of the struggle, not the end.

In the United States, we don’t celebrate winning our freedom. We celebrate fighting for it.

Keep fighting. Keep your joy.

Be awesome. Read books.

-Elizabeth Owner/Founder