A Wanda Coleman Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library?

We vote yes! The recommendation, submitted by Austin Straus (Wanda Coleman's widow) and supported by the Los Angeles Times asks that the county consider changing the name of the Ascot Branch Library in South Los Angeles to The Wanda Coleman Memorial Library. More:

Little more than a year after the death of Wanda Coleman, the poet’s husband, Austin Straus, is asking the Los Angeles Public Library to honor her memory. In a letter sent earlier this month to the Board of Library commissioners, Straus requests that the library's Ascot branch, on Florence Avenue and Main Street in South Los Angeles, “be renamed The Wanda Coleman Memorial Library.”

This, it should go without saying, is a great idea.

In her 2005 book “The Riot Inside Me,” Coleman recalls her early visits to the library, although even there, she writes, she was required to work the system: “At that time,” she tells us, “books were segregated — you had boys’ literature and girls’ literature. When I went to the library (Ascot and Downtown branches), I could read ‘Cheryl Crane, Nurse,” books by the Bronte sisters, and Nancy Drew mysteries — yes, those horrible things! But I wasn’t allowed to read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or H.P. Lovecraft — the boy’s books.”

Her solution? “I would have my father go to the library with me. I would pick out what I wanted and he would check the books out. … Then I could read to my heart’s content!” [...]

Learn more at LA Times's Jacket Copy.