Meet Joan Jocson-Singh

We recently connected with Joan Jocson-Singh and have shared our conversation below.

Joan, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

It took me reaching my 40s to finally answer this question and it’s not really a short one. Feel free to edit as needed!

I feel like I can finally articulate the lush and emotional landscape that is my mind. Perhaps it needed this long a time to marinate in my body. I don’t know.

I was often a child who felt displaced, or what my therapist today has labeled “abandoned.” It took me a lifetime to understand the implications and meaning behind that word. I’m the youngest of three children and never particularly felt like I was abandoned. It was the kind of childhood where you woke up on Saturday mornings to fight with your brother so that you could watch your favorite cartoon, only to be bullied into watching yet another episode of GI Joe.

“Where were my parents?” wasn’t really a question in the forefront of my lucky charms cereal-filled brain. My absentee immigrant parents were a normalized environment for me. “What do you mean my 11 year old brother couldn’t look after his 6 year old sister?” In the Philippines, much younger kids knew how to wash their family’s clothes in the ilog (river) by themselves and walk home. “How hard was it to watch your kid sister?”, my parents would ask my brother.

But, by the age of 13, I had been in three different schools already, mostly because tuition was just too much for my parents to send their littlest ones for a Catholic education. In the meantime, moving into a new school every three years led me to honing my social skills of making friends – not realizing I was really developing skills to “read” adults, converse with older kids (like my brother’s friends), and develop the ability to let things slide and remain flexible – all types of survival skills and later, resulted in hyper-independence as an adult.

My sense of self was rooted in pleasing others in order to keep friendships, cultivate belonging and feel seen. This, however, only encouraged me to remain both inside and outside of the realm of real community. It’s perhaps this feeling of displacement that made me stay in situations where the illusion of control and stability seemed so attractive. I stayed far too long in relationships that I had outgrown. My 20 year first-love and marriage being one of them.

In reality, such a gullible outlook was naïve of me. But I had no real comparison from which to learn. So much of what we hear today regarding parenting strategies harkens to “generational trauma.” Yet, I’m not upset at my parents. How could I be? It must have taken them an enormous toll just to come to a new country and start a life and family. How were they to know about the psychology of free-range, helicopter, or authoritarian types of parenting?

I really don’t hold any particular good or bad feelings about the way I was raised. I was fed, clothed, educated and had a roof over my head. I knew even then that I was lucky. And while my father was unaffectionate and emotionally closed off, my mother more than made up for it with kindness and generosity. In many ways, I try to emulate her. The only difference is through my time. She wasn’t able to be around much because of two jobs and her health issues. But ultimately, I like to think that my resilience comes from something inexplicably within – some invincible optimism that fosters fortitude from all my experiences, good and bad.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I’m currently the inaugural Director of Library at The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, set to open in 2026 in LA. Founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson, I have the pleasure of building the Library’s collection along with my fellow Library staff and colleagues in Learning & Engagement. My additional background as an anthropologist/ethnographer aligns well with our museum’s focus on storytelling and narrative as a mode of articulation. I strongly advocate elevating the voices of the marginalized through personal vignettes and narrative; in all forms that it can manifest – art, performance, the book and film.

Previously, I’ve worked as the Institute Librarian (Dean) at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) which is what brought me to LA (2020), as the Head of Technical Services at Lehman College (2018), and as the Acquisitions Order Unit Librarian at Columbia University’s Butler Library in NY (2016).

In general, I feel like I’ve had a very unconventional trajectory in career and probably motherhood, but it all started after I earned my BA in Art (Drawing) and Art History (Medieval Art and Architecture) at SUNY Albany. I had a serendipitous meeting with the Visual Arts Librarian there who opened my eyes to art librarianship and I was able to move on to gain my Masters in Library Science and an Archives certificate at Pratt Institute. About a year after graduating with my MLS, I got a dream job working at the Watson Library in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which really combined all my love for art, information and public services.

Later, I worked at Lehman College (a CUNY School) and because of CUNY’s tenure process for librarians, I went back to school to gain my Masters in Anthropology from Hunter College, where my love of researching heavy metal music and gender began. I had a thesis topic inspired from attending local metal shows in the tri-state area and my curiosity of women and representation in the subculture.

Last year, my co-writer and fellow librarian – Julie Turley and I published our book: Heavy Music Mothers: Extreme Identities, Narrative Disruptions, where we interviewed and told the stories of mothers who identified as music industry professionals and discuss challenges of motherhood while participating in extreme music genres.

In addition, I moderate a Facebook group called Metal Music Librarians (welcomed to all, not just librarians), where I post the latest on CFPs, academic metal conferences and metal music related news.

I continue to think up innovative programming ideas, network, and situate myself with the SoCal Art Librarians and the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA), whilst continuing to write and research on gender, heavy metal music, zines, special collections, and motherhood.

Lastly, along with my colleague Junior Tidal, we were the recipients of the 2020 ALA grant for Exploring Extreme Music and Marginalized Communities Bibliography and often, you can find me speaking about my article, “Vigilante Feminism as a form of Musical Protest in Extreme Metal Music,” published by Intellect in the journal, Metal Music Studies.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

1. Empathy – I think this is probably the most important quality to have in all walks of life, whether it be professionally or personally. I don’t think I would have arrived where I am or continue to grow without this. I certainly feel that mentors I had along the way often exhibited empathy which allowed me to see it in the people I’ve learned to lead. And so I often cite leading with empathy as a crucial quality.

2. Community – Secondly, I think building a community/tribe is so important. When the pandemic hit, I was moving my family of four to LA from NY in the height of isolation. At the same time, going through separation and divorce was one of the biggest challenges I faced and I’m not sure how I would have weathered it without my community of family, friends and colleagues.

3. Representation – Early on in my career as a librarian, I realized representation had a big impact on me. Currently, just over 81% of librarians identify as white, with only a little over 5% identifying as Asian.* And while our field is predominantly women, there is still a significant wage gap. Being able to see women like myself as well as be an example became an important goal for me as I climbed the proverbial ladder.

*https://www.dpeaflcio.org/factsheets/library-professionals-facts-and-figures#:~:text=of%20Library%20Professionals-,The%20librarian%20profession%20suffers%20from%20a%20persistent%20lack%20of%20racial,age%20of%2055.%5B18%5D

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

I’m always looking for thought-partners and collaborators on a variety of things. I love the idea of working with change agents who have an IDEAB (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access and Belonging) background in regards to education and libraries. In addition, I’m always looking to hear from folks who have interests in gender and extreme musical subcultures, building collections, special collections and innovative museum library programming.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ontheshelves.wordpress.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/extrememetallibrarian/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/519503328181880/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joan-jocson-singh-ma-mlis-54403665/