Seeking Literary Justice

Abstract

A Boyle Heights children’s storytelling hour resulted from a collaboration between six UCLA researchers and Libros Schmibros, an independent bookstore and lending library in Boyle Heights, which took place over four months in 2016. The project explored how small-scale staged literary interventions like a storytelling hour could have a productive impact on a community. The initiative came about as a way to promote something called “literary justice,” which is premised on the idea of a culture that embraces stories as a part of life as part of a community-building effort. It is achieved when all members of a community have equal access to books and stories, stemming from numerous studies that demonstrate that a person’s access to literature is a strong indicator for a host of quality-of-life measures. This effort in Boyle Heights aimed to show what happens when, instead of going to a public library to make use of it, here the public library comes to the people.