It’s a cool October morning in Athens, and a light breeze stirs leaves across the freshly trimmed grass outside the Pinewoods Library.  

Five women step through the library’s doors, escaping the chill. The doorbell lets out a pitched chime, and they gather around a wooden table in the center of the room. They drape their coats over the backs of their chairs and scatter their notebooks and worksheets across the table. 

A red sheet of drawing paper hangs on the wall behind them, with “Words We Know” spread across the top in large bubble letters. The page is crowded with Spanish and English translations of foods they’ll explore this week as they practice culinary vocabulary.  

But today’s class is unique: each student has prepared their favorite homemade dish and will describe it to the rest of the class in English.   

The women take turns sharing generational homemade chocolate recipes and secrets to the perfect Day of the Dead bread, one by one constructing sentences to present their dishes to their classmates.  

“Perfecto,” “Muy Bien,” the instructor gently nudges, easing any nervousness the women may have.  

At the table, a 9-month-old baby naps peacefully at the foot of her mother’s chair until it’s the woman’s turn to speak. Then, the baby begins to cry. 

Without hesitation, the instructor rises from her chair to grab a baby doll from a nearby bookshelf. She kneels before the little girl and gifts her the doll with a comforting smile.   

“Shhhhh, you’re okay; it’s not your time to talk,” the instructor jokes. 

Immediately, the baby is calmed, her attention fixed on the curly-haired doll in a purple dress gently held out before her. 

It’s not typical for a teacher to stop their instruction for an interruption such as this one, but Evelyn Rushing is anything but typical.  

In fact, it wasn’t long ago that Rushing was in the shoes of many of the women in her English class today.  

Perhaps all too well, she knows the struggles of navigating a world in which English isn’t your first language.

The frustration of constant miscommunications, the sting of being misunderstood, and the courage it takes to keep learning.  

Rushing, 45, a petite woman with jet black hair that falls to her shoulders dresses in dark slacks and brighter blouses, but nothing extravagant, perhaps a lingering tendency from her childhood in Peru, where she grew up in a loving home no larger than the Pinewood Library’s computer room. 

As the middle child of five siblings, she learned early on the fleeting value of material things.  

Since becoming the Pinewoods Library’s branch manager in July 2023, she’s never without her lanyard, crowded with homemade buttons from her 8-year-old daughter, Lydia. One reads, “I Love Mom,” and another says, “It’s me. I’m The Librarian.” 

Rushing moved to the United States in 2009. Quickly realizing the first step to building a life here was learning English, she tucked herself into the back of an adult English class at Milledge Avenue Baptist Church.

The instructor was talking about something trivial, she recalls, like boo-boos or band-aids.  

Not even 20 minutes had passed before she was racing down the stairs and out the door.  

“I need to leave,” she cried, “I need to go back to Peru. I have so many things to say, but I can’t say them here.”  

After six months in Athens, everything still felt as unfamiliar as the day she arrived, quite opposite to the reassuring phone calls she’d make to her father in Peru, promising it would take only three months to learn the language and start working. 

For the next two years, she studied English day and night. She read whatever books she could find, slowly removing anything in Spanish from around her house.  

Gradually, the language started to make sense.  

Years later, as director of the library, Rushing spends every Tuesday and Thursday at 10:30 a.m. equipping the women in her classes with the tools they need to survive.  

She teaches them to make doctor’s appointments and communicate with teachers at their children’s schools. 

And the little things to build confidence, the “shhh” sound in shoe and the subtle differences in pronouncing “keys” and “kiss.”  

She knows what it takes to make her students feel empowered, what would have helped her years ago as she sat in the back of class, overwhelmed by fast-paced lessons and vocabulary she feared she’d never understand. 

This week, only five women have shown up to class. But, Rushing is far from disappointed.  

She’s aware of the challenges many face just to attend, from arranging childcare, picking up extra shifts, or struggling to find transportation.  

The class runs 30 minutes late and Rushing smiles as the women create a group text, exchanging numbers to share recipes and offer each other rides to next week’s class.   

Most librarians pursue the profession out of a passion for books, not because they want to save their community. But not Rushing. 

She had been working for the Clarke County School District for 12 years when she discovered the Pinewoods Library had gone two years without a director and was at risk of closing.  

There was no question about what she needed to do.  

Friends and family questioned her choice to leave the district. 

“What about the benefits?” they’d ask. “Won’t it be longer hours? And what about the pay?”    

But Rushing was resolute; she knew the Latino community needed the library just as much as they needed schools, groceries, and roofs over their heads.  

Needed it, perhaps, more than they realized.  

Rushing transformed the once-underutilized library into a vital resource for the Pinewoods Community.  

This afternoon, she’s busy packing 300 boxes for the Hallmark Holiday Community Resource Fair, filled with canned goods and essentials to help with the approaching cold weather. 

This event, like many organized by the library, brings together resources from the police department, Department of Public Health, Clarke County School District, and local organizations serving the Latino community such as Casa De Amistad, to one easily accessible location for the Pinewoods community. 

Beyond English classes, Rushing has welcomed bilingual parenting courses with the Department of Public Health, student tutoring, and citizenship test preparation classes. 

Rushing vividly recalls the day she became a U.S. citizen, the overwhelming pride of passing her exam and the celebrations in red, white and blue that surrounded her all day long. 

Soon after, she studied the citizenship process and the test in detail. She began helping others at the library prepare for their citizenship tests and navigate the process.  

Rushing works tirelessly to make the library a safe space for the Pinewoods community. 

It’s a place for mothers to send their children while at work, a space to learn English safely, and a welcoming environment where individuals can feel included and connect with their community.

It is the place that Rushing herself longed for when she first arrived in this country all those years ago. 

Lilly Stone is a senior majoring in journalism at the University of Georgia.