You’ve likely seen a Little Free Library — one of those small, wooden boxes sprinkled across town where anyone can take a book or leave a book. In Brookline, there are 21 of them, and they’re all getting a refresh this summer.
That’s thanks to a local nonprofit that’s making sure everyone sees themselves in the stories on each of the shelves. Brookline for Racial Justice and Equity launched the Read On, Dream On campaign to stock each of those tiny libraries with books by authors of color.
This is coming at a time when diversity has become a politicized word, and when fewer Americans than ever are reading for pleasure. According to new research, just 16% of Americans age 15 and older are reading for leisure every day.
That’s why on this week’s Joy Beat, we’re celebrating this inclusive book drop campaign. Executive Director of Brookline for Racial Justice and Equity Raul Fernandez joined GBH’s All Things Considered guest host Saraya Wintersmith to share more about the project. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.
Saraya Wintersmith: What inspired this book drop campaign? Was it always the goal to stock all 21 of Brookline’s Little Free Libraries, or did that evolve?
Raul Fernandez: It really came about through this idea of me reading to my daughter, Maya, who’s now about four-and-a-half years old, and making sure that we’re using inclusive titles. Really, the way that I think about it is bringing together books that actually reflect the world that she actually lives in.
It’s not so much about, “Here’s some other identities that are out there.” I mean, she sees all these identities in her world all the time. She sees people of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, families where there are two moms or two dads, all the time, who are part of her extended family. [I’m] making sure that what we’re reading together really reflects what she sees already in the world.
You know, as someone who’s frequented these Little Free Libraries in Brookline and elsewhere, I haven’t always seen that representation in the titles that are there. We thought that this was a really good way to sort of share some stories and to make sure that what people are seeing in our community through Little Free Libraries and elsewhere is reflective of who actually lives in the community.
Wintersmith: I love that this came from you being a dad! Is there criteria for the books that you choose to include?
Fernandez: No, we really span from young kids’ books all the way up to adult books. We try to have a variety. We reach out to friends and see what books they think we should be including. We’ve sent some stuff out through the newsletter that we have, inviting people to give us suggestions for titles. People have also offered to give books themselves.
It’s really been a joint community project. There is no shortage of really great books out there that we can include, so over time, we’ll just make sure that we’re being as reflective as possible of the panoply of identities and experiences that are out there.
Wintersmith: Okay, I think this is going to be my favorite part. Do you have a favorite? I’m looking at the one that you have with you now.
Fernandez: I have so many favorite books, I’ll tell you. The one I have with me right now is called “I Wish You Knew,” and it’s written by Jackie Azua Kramer and illustrated by Magdalena Mora. It’s about a young girl whose father had recently been deported. “I Wish You Knew” is an exercise that they do in her school, where kids can think about something that’s going on in their lives that really impacts them.
In the story, you hear other kids [talking about] what’s happening in their lives, and she, of course, decides to share hers. If the kids want, during circle time, they can actually share out loud — they don’t have to — about what they wish the people around them knew about what they’re going through.
When I read [the book], it makes me cry a little bit, and it makes me sad, especially in this moment we’re in right now, where so much of what we see through our screens is people being taken, being abducted, and either being detained or deported. What we don’t see are the families of those people, and here we have an insight into one of those families and one of those kids and the impact that it has on her, and she shares about her brother.
It’s just really moving and meaningful and, again, every time I look at it, it makes me want to cry. I hope that other people will read this book and think a little bit more deeply about what we’re living through right now and the impacts they’re having on families and especially kids.
Wintersmith: You’re talking about a book being able to inspire some empathy where maybe someone hadn’t thought of it before. Is that a big part of why you think representation in literature is important? Has it played any other role in your own life?
Fernandez: Yeah, you know, I think it’s important that the decisions we make as communities take into consideration all the people who are part of our communities. We have — and thinking about, particularly, immigrant populations — folks who we call our neighbors, who, in many cases, don’t have the same rights that many of us do.
And I’m not talking about just folks who are undocumented, but even people who are immigrants but not citizens. They get their trash picked up like everybody else. Their kids go to school like everybody else, but they don’t get to vote like everybody else about who represents them and the way that decisions are made at the local, state or even federal levels.
Really thinking about how if we’re going to be a community, if we are going to be neighbors, what it means to really have the people who are around us be full members of our communities — and that, to me, is really important.
Now, Brookline happens to be a community that’s actually voted to allow immigrants to vote in local elections. That hasn’t passed at the state level yet, but we’ve voted for that twice now as a way to say, you know, if immigrants are welcome here, then they should also have a say in how our government is run.
I also point to the recent Supreme Court conversation about different texts, and particularly texts where there are gay parents or family members, and the ability for schools to potentially restrict access to those texts. Again, those are our families that live within our community, and to have them represented in these stories is not about perpetuating a narrative or indoctrinating people into some sort of idea around gender or sexual identity. It’s just about reflecting the world that people live in.
Wintersmith: What’s been the response to the initiative so far? It sounds like you’ve gotten good feedback with people willing to help with the drops.
Fernandez: It’s been really great. We’ve got a lot of folks who, like I said, offered us books and title suggestions. When we did the second drop, we noticed that a lot of the books that we did in the first drop were no longer there, so that’s good. That means people are taking them out of there and reading them, so that’s been terrific.
We’re just excited to keep it going and get more community input, and make sure that it’s as reflective as possible of people’s stories and what they want to see shared in the community. That’s been really great.
Wintersmith: And when you do a drop, you do all 21 [libraries]?
Fernandez: Yeah! We plug it in, one after the other, into Google Maps, and so it just takes us from one spot to the next. I think we’re getting faster now as we do it more and more. But yeah, folks want to join us for kind of like a ride-along and do it. It’s a lot of fun, and we just talk the whole time. It’s really great.
Wintersmith: We touched at the top that diversity is this politically charged word now, and leisure reading is declining sharply. What role do you think grassroots efforts like yours can play in shaping cultural norms?
Fernandez: Yeah, that’s a good question. And by the way, I felt that too — since the pandemic, I feel like I read a whole lot less in terms of books. I mean, there’s so much information coming our way all the time, especially through our phones and elsewhere. This has sort of caused me to pause a little bit and dive into some of these stories [through] this initiative that we’re doing right now.
I hope other people will rediscover that joy of reading. I think it’s better for us, for our humanity, because so much of what we see online right now is so negative. But to remember the beauty in our stories, our existence and our humanity, the more we stay focused and centered on that, I think the better off we’ll be.
If you’d like to make a nomination for the Joy Beat, leave us a voicemail at (617) 300-BEAT [2328].
