Main fundraiser photo

The Amy Blumenthal Collection

Amy Blumenthal was so many things at once: a passionate professor, a robust writer, a warm glow in the room. On May 27th, 2017, after a battle with illness, we lost a powerful presence. 

My friend and classmate Carolyn Fleder and I met Amy while abroad for a year with Kenyon College at the University of Exeter, where she took on the roles of not only professor, tour guide, and motivator, but also mother. Her husband, one of our professors leading the trip, Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky, was so generous to share her with us. I don't know how she managed to do it, but I would wager that every single one of us had a moment where Amy effortlessly plucked us out of some dark crevasse. She had a way of knowing exactly when you needed a gentle word, or a confident rousing speech, or just a small comforting smile or shoulder pat. I think she was magic. I think she still is magic, currently.

She had an endless and sincere capacity for empathy, and such great intellect that she wore with such humility, without pretension or judgment, just a pure, genuine fascination with the world, and a passion for sharing that fascination with those around her. She lit up with engagement in a way that was completely contagious.

We are not the ones to memorialize Amy; we only knew a fraction of the woman she was. But we were itching to do something, to make Amy's legacy known in a way that could actually better lives, the way that Amy bettered ours. 

And Carolyn knew the exact right way to honor her. 

In Carolyn's own words:

"I live in a small city called Pinas in southern Ecuador, tucked into some beautiful mountains-- tucked is actually a nice way to put it, more accurately Pinas is a city built at an 85 degree angle into the side of a mountain.

These communities tend not to produce the majority of the goods they consume, and like an island, things must be imported. I work as an English teacher in a high school and one thing I was really disappointed to find was that reading  for pleasure is just not a big part of Ecuadorean culture-- "book stores" actually only sell school supplies, but no books, the school's "library" is just where they keep old textbooks, no one reads for pleasure, including my fellow English teachers!

This past year I started to build up a modest little library in the English department with book donations from my community back home in New York. I hope to coordinate a donation of books in honor of Amy and the endless and passionate love she had for learning and sharing knowledge. "

Here is our preliminary list of books (Spanish/bilingual edition when available) we will include in the "Amy Blumenthal Collection" in Pinas, Ecuador, and how much they would cost, with shipping: 

Madeleine, Ludwig Bemelmans - $12.45
Orgullo y Prejuicio, Jane Austen - $13.79
Matar un Riusenor, Harper Lee - $16.60
Las Ventajas de Ser Invisible/ The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky - $18.38
Secret Garden/ El Jardin Secreto, Frances Hodgson Burnett - $12
Ciudades de Papel/ Paper Towns, John Green - $14.78
Paraiso Perdido/ Paradise Lost, John Milton - $12
Peter Pan, John Barrie - $17.95
Little Women/Mujercitas, Louisa May Alcott - $15.07
The International Student's Guide to American Colleges - $25.99

In order to be able to purchase and ship these books to Ecuador, we will need to raise a total of $148.91. Any additional funds will go directly to purchasing other books for the library. 

Possibilities include:

El Gran Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald - $7.01
Hamlet (Spanish edition), William Shakespeare - $11.53
Romeo & Juliet: Graphic Novel, William Shakespeare - $17.36
El Alquimista,  Paulo Coelho - $9.27
Mundo Feliz, Aldous Huxley - $8.73
1984, George Orwell - $10
Cometas en el Cielo/ The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini - $10.21

These are just some thoughts on the books we would like to include in the collection. We would love to hear any and all suggestions!

We also plan on inscribing the books and creating bookplates that read, "This book was donated in the memory of Amy Blumenthal."

Thank you to all who can donate. 

"A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."
                                           - John Milton


Amy reads from William Wordsworth's copy of Paradise Lost, annotations and all, at the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere, Cumbria, England, while her husband Sergei and students of the 2013 Kenyon-Exeter program share in her joy.

Organizer

Abby Roberts
Organizer
Brooklyn, NY

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