When Chiara Arroyo and Celene Navarrete decided to sell children's books in Spanish in 2012, they weren't worried about customer demand.
As mothers with children at Edison Language Academy in Santa Monica, they saw that the market for bilingual books for both Latinos and non-Latinos was booming, especially as schools created dual-immersion programs. As immigrants from Mexico and Spain, they knew that Spanish had been a part of Southern California for more than 250 years and wasn't going away anytime soon.
No, what bothered them was the eternal question facing Angelenos:
The co-founder of LA Librería, Celene Navarrete, in her bookstore.
(Étienne Laurent / For The Times)
How is it achieved in Los Angeles?
“It's very easy to be invisible in this city,” Navarrete told me as we walked to the back of LA Librería, the brick-and-mortar store she and Arroyo own and manage. “It is very widespread. Promotion is very difficult. “You have to go from community to community, street to street.”
Navarrete and Arroyo knew that success was not guaranteed even in a city with a long literary tradition in Spanish, a megalopolis where the United States Census Bureau estimates that almost 40% of households speak Spanish. They were preparing to launch in an era when bookstores were closing, Amazon dominated online sales, and the publishing industry was preparing to shift from paper to digital.
However, the two were not intimidated by a feeling of obligation brought on by disgust. The few children's books translated from English to Spanish they could find were riddled with errors.
“A book with errors is not published in English,” Arroyo said. “In Spanish, [American publishers] I don't mind. Do you think Spanish-speaking families don't have money? “There are negative values associated with Spanish.”
“What tremendous prejudices,” Navarrete added. “When we saw the reality,” opening a store “became a necessity.”
They started with an online bookstore and began hosting school book fairs across the United States. Then came a small store in West Adams that opened to the public in 2015. Community festivals, contracts with schools to provide bilingual books, and a growing fame as one of the few Spanish-language children's bookstores in the country, and one of the only bookstores in Spanish in Los Angeles, period.
LA Librería co-founders Chiara Arroyo, left, and Celene Navarrete in the warehouse.
(Étienne Laurent / For The Times)
The COVID-19 pandemic nearly wiped out LA Librería, but Arroyo and Navarrete pulled through with the help of grants and the fact that “the kids went home with books to read,” according to Navarrete. The store has not only recovered, but is also ready for the next stage of success.
I met Arroyo and Navarrete a few weeks ago at their new location: a long, single-story, 4,400-square-foot building in Mid-City that's twice the size of LA Librería's latest location and will officially debut in mid-June . .
“We have asked ourselves many times if we were crazy,” Arroyo, 47, said with a laugh and then looked at Navarrete. The two are gregarious but not irritating, holding conversations with the grace and teamwork of Mookie Betts throwing a shot at Freddie Freeman.
Navarrete, 51, shook his head with a broad smile. “We don't even believe what we have, because we are so happy.”
Our tour began in the warehouse section, where 8,000 titles from around the Spanish-speaking world on all kinds of topics sat in boxes and on huge steel shelves, better suited for tires. We spoke almost exclusively in Spanish, and I switched to English a few times even though Spanish It was my first language. They were both understanding.
The books are displayed at LA Librería.
(Étienne Laurent / For The Times)
“The interest in bilingualism is here,” said Navarrete, who is also a professor of coding and computer information systems management at Cal State Dominguez Hills. “It's something we have to work on, changing the importance of maintaining Spanish.”
“People want to feel represented,” said Arroyo, a former film critic for Spanish and Mexican publications. “They don't just ask, 'Do you have books about Guatemala?' They ask: 'Do you have books? of Guatemala?' “They want to see themselves.”
Of Spanish and Italian descent, Arroyo grew up in Barcelona, Spain, where “on every corner, in small towns, there was a bookstore.” Navarrete, originally from the Mexican state of Aguascalientes, grew up in a home where books were not as common but were still highly valued. When the two met, they were baffled by the dearth of Spanish-language literature available in Los Angeles. Festivals and bookstores had come and gone over the decades, wiped out by lack of funding and the precarious business that is selling books in the digital age.
Chiara Arroyo, co-founder of LA Librería.
(Étienne Laurent / For The Times)
“Spanish has always coexisted here along with English. all types of Spanish,” Navarrete said. “But most of what we were able to find was through Mexican eyes.”
Now we were walking through the LA Librería offices, which also serve as a packaging area. Empty carts and dollies stood near two employees preparing books for delivery. There were interesting things everywhere. A compendium of Latin American folk tales. A young adult version of the memoirs of radio legend María Hinojosa. Illustrated books that teach words to Spanish speakers in Nahuatl and Mayan. Above us were gigantic paper mache heads of alebrijes — colorful Mexican folk art figures — used in LA Librería's recent appearance at the LA Times Book Festival, where they hosted a signing for me.
“A book in Spanish in this city has a different meaning in this city,” Navarrete said. “A child learns to maintain the language of his parents, or simply learns it. For immigrant parents or grandparents, books allow them to teach a new generation, but they also allow them to remember.”
“It's a mirror,” Arroyo said. “A portal”.
The two laughed as they remembered the early days of LA Librería: how the store started in their homes and moved to its first location. How demand soon outstripped supply. How clients also quickly requested readings.
“Do you know Charlie Chaplin?” Arroyo said. “Our first place was like that. We took this out, moved that, and our kitchen became a reading space, just like that!
That won't be a challenge at the new LA Liberia location. The tour ended at the front of the store. Wooden planks and sheets of plywood were waiting to be transformed into shelves. A glass-enclosed conference room the two jokingly call “the Fishbowl” will serve as a community gathering space for workshops.
(Étienne Laurent / For The Times)
Once the store opens, it's time to work on more dreams. Deepen your relationships with other non-English speaking bookstores in Los Angeles. Your own publishing house. Expand the Los Angeles Book Festival, a bilingual fair they co-founded. Selling more books for adults in Spanish.
“We have control over the world of children, but we don't know the world of adults,” Navarrete said. “But step by step” — little by little step.
She smiled. “The kids who bought our first books are now in college.”
Arroyo nodded. “Our spouses say we have the stars aligned for us. Maybe they are right!
