Why I Opened the First Little Free Library in My BIPOC Neighborhood

Ever since I was little, I have loved Little Free Libraries. You probably have seen them around where you live, little wooden boxes in front of people’s houses full of books that are free for people to take and open for people to leave their own books behind as well. Sometimes people fill them not only with books but also with DVDs, personal hygiene items, and even canned food. For years, every time I’ve seen one while on the way to somewhere else, I’ve made my mom stop the car and park while I hurry over, take a picture, and peek inside, excited to see what free book I might be taking home that day. I love what they represent, this access to free materials outside of bookstores and their rising prices, or even a traditional library, which may present barriers to some if they require an ID or proof of address to borrow items. The idea of the Little Free Library – “Take a Book. Share a Book” – is to me a symbol of complete open access to resources, information, and ideas. It’s takes just one person to build one and it can impact a whole community.

At the same time, they also tend to perpetuate the same cycles that they claim to resist. I live in California where wealthier cities are more likely to have Little Free Libraries because of how much it costs to buy a pre-made kit from the parent company or create your own, let alone keep it stocked with materials. The cheapest library kit will run you nearly $200, while the most expensive is over $450. The people who have the most ability to pay those prices aren’t the ones who need these resources the most. In the city where I live, we have only one other Little Free Library near the local public library, making mine the first of its kind to be built at someone’s residence. Meanwhile, just seven miles away in an upper-class, wealthy neighborhood, I find one on every other street. Little Free Libraries are rarely found in working-class or lower-income communities, which can be frustrating for folks looking to start one or find one. On top of that, my city is mostly made up of BIPOC and is known for its majority Asian and Latinx population, which means we face even more barriers and discrimination in every aspect of our lives, including how we access information.

But that didn’t deter me. If anything, the fact that Little Free Libraries aren’t as equitable as they should be made me motivated to start one of my own. I wanted books and other resources to be more accessible. I wanted to do what our local public library wasn’t and make up for what we have gone for years without, like bookstores (not only because we didn’t have any but also because they present a financial obstacle to obtaining materials). I wanted it to be completely by the community and for the community.

Honestly, my family and I could’ve bought the official kit online but even the most expensive only offers two shelves worth of space. Since we’re all big readers and had a lot of books to give away, I wanted at least three shelves and I wanted it to be big as physically possible. What we were afraid of was that it would cost more because we were building it from scratch and would have to cover the cost of the wood, paint, post, roof covering, and any miscellaneous accessories.

Thankfully, we didn’t have to do it alone. Over the course of two summers, we were able to raise a whopping $800 just by running garage sales out of our front lawn. Our neighbors had no idea what we were using the money for but they showed up in droves, purchasing our old clothes, appliances, books, DVDs, and furniture items. It was also a great chance to learn more about the people who lived nearby, some of them who have lived here for decades just like us.

From there, my partner, who has a background in architecture, put together a custom design for our Little Free Library to include three shelves, a thatched roof, original illustrations on the side, and a big pot where he would plant native yarrow around the post. Somehow, even with the limits of gravity and weight, he made it work and spent the next nine months making my years-long dream a reality: buying the wood, cutting into pieces, screwing them together, attaching the doors, drawing and painting the artwork, attaching it to the post, filling the pot with cement, then placing plants for the final touch. In the end, it ended up costing a little over $400 but considering we had way more space and it was custom built to my specifications, it was more than worth it.

For me, what made it so special was that everything down to the illustrations was intentional. My partner created what ended up being amazing reflections of the flora and fauna of our community, as well as images that were near and dear to my family. On one side, he drew native bees and butterflies flying above a meadow of native plants like California poppies and Matilija poppies. On the back, he painted an image of the fig tree that grows in my family’s backyard, which gives us hundreds of figs every summer. On the other side, he drew the family dog Buttons chasing after a monarch butterfly, again to celebrate the creatures that mean so much to us.

It was also exciting to see how everyone in the family pitched in and supported us. While my partner was the main builder and designer of the library and it had been my idea in the first place, my relatives, including my parents, went out of their way to help with the ribbon cutting ceremony that was scheduled for the week after the soft opening. Even though we were in the middle of a heat wave, they invited their friends, bought food, set up tables for crafts, and posted tons of pictures they’d taken online. My dad even managed to get my grandparents to come all the away from Mexico just so they could watch the ceremony and listen to the speeches!

And the response from the community that we’d built the Little Free Library was beyond anything we could’ve imagined. Dozens of people showed up with boxes of books to donate and took boxes of new books back. Throughout the day, I got to see the impact and positive consequences of what we had built first-hand, which was exciting and humbling. Teacher friends of mine showed up and took books for their classrooms, parents and their kids were able to find new reads (one even took home an SAT prep book my mom had donated, which they might not have been able to access otherwise), grandmothers found picture books for their grandchildren, and perfect strangers stopped to see what was going on and ended up finding stuff they liked and were shocked when they found out everything was free.

Since then, I’ve made it part of my daily routine to check and refill the Little Free Library every morning. If you did the math, you’ll notice that we ended up having funds left over, which can used to continue meeting the needs of my community, expanding the available items to go beyond books and include DVDs, VHS tapes, notebooks, pens, sticker sheets, coloring pages, doggy bags, and sanitary napkins. Soon, I hope to add take-home baggies with tea bags and face masks as the weather changes into fall when we could all use little comfort items. I also make it a priority to always offer a wide selection of Spanish-language materials and am keeping an eye out for materials in Chinese, Tagalog, and other languages to make sure everyone in the neighborhood feels included. In everything I hope to do with the library, making sure that everyone in the community knows that this is a resource they can use is my only and most important goal.

Of course, I know that books can only do so much. They aren’t going to pay anyone’s bills or accomplish responsibilities and chores around the house or make life less stressful. And I am by no means anyone’s savior, nor do I want to be. What I do know, however, is that people’s lives are being impacted by our neighborhood’s new Little Free Library. Maybe someone can finally get their hands on a book that they weren’t able to buy before. Maybe they found a present for a relative that takes some of the financial burden off their shoulders. Maybe they don’t find anything they like but at least know it’s a resource they can use without expectations or strings attached, and now have access to something that they didn’t before.

It’s a strange, scary, and frustrating thing to be the first but I’m hopeful that I will inspire others in my community to start their own Little Free Libraries and give back to a place that has given to much to me. This is only the beginning of what is sure to be a much bigger and even more impactful movement toward literacy, equitable access, education, and liberation.