Championing Literacy in Oak Cliff
Written By: Grant Klembara · Photography By: Doug Klembara
Claudia fondly remembers her childhood. She spent evenings at the kitchen table reading with her sisters as her mom cooked dinner. Her dad often shared his favorite poems or philosophers with them as they sat on the back porch, music playing in the background.
She was born and raised in Oak Cliff–one stop down from Whose Books–near the Hampton DART Station. Her parents were the first in their families to go to college. Both became teachers who knew the value of education. Importantly for Claudia, they instilled a love of reading in her that continues to this day.
“Growing up, I never had any negative association with reading,” she said. Reading was never used by her parents as a tool for punishment. It was an opportunity for their family to bond together. Through their favorite stories they shared a deeper connection and interacted with new ideas as the matured. “I fell in love with the power of stories. You can see yourself in stories, you can learn through other cultures, you can travel, and so many more things,” she said. Her parents also advocated for the schools to include Hispanic authors into the curriculum and were intentional in building a bilingual library at home.
““What was always missing here in our neighborhood was somewhere we could go just to purchase books,””
Her parents placed a high value on reading by buying books for her and her siblings. They made every effort possible to bring literacy to them. “They knew it would lead to our success,” she said. There’s good research to support that too. According to Unite for Literacy, children that grow up in households with at least 100 books are statistically much more likely to succeed in a variety of areas, including literacy and numeracy.
Oak Cliff was and sadly still largely is a book desert. “What was always missing here in our neighborhood was somewhere we could go just to purchase books,” she said. If you look at the Global Book Desert Map–a map put together by Unite for Literacy with the estimated percentage of homes with more than 100 books in any given area, you’ll see a lot of red in Oak Cliff. Go a bit further North, red turns to yellow and eventually green. “We had great access to libraries and then our schools, you know, were also in the process of growing their own libraries. But for book ownership we had to get on the highway and go North,” she said.
As time went on, Claudia got married and started to raise kids. Many years later, she bumped up against the same problem. When it came to simply building a home library and letting the kids pick out their own books, there were no options for buying new books in Oak Cliff.
“Claudia began her career as an educator at Sunset High School and eventually ended it there too. For many years, she saw these literacy issues firsthand.”
Claudia began her career as an educator at Sunset High School and eventually ended it there too. For many years, she saw these literacy issues firsthand. There were limited local bookstores, yes, but Claudia and others were also struggling to find stories that positively represented their children. So many of them presented a stereotypical family that simply didn’t resemble or connect with them. She also saw how educational institutions can unintentionally take away the love of reading. With standardized tests, rigid schedules, and comprehension tests galore, students are often left with a bad taste in their mouth. “All of those things can chip away at the beauty of what reading is,” she said.
She began to see how critical and fragile the connection with books is for kids, especially at an early age. How reading is approached at home and school has a huge impact: “It's either gonna be something that will continue to grow and flourish. Or, it's going to become a chore, and I've seen both,” she said.
Claudia is also a published children’s author. She saw an opportunity through literature to help comfort her daughter and decided to write a new bedtime story of the Cucuy. El Cucuy in Mexican culture is much like the boogie monster in American culture. He is a scary figure who hides under the beds of children at night and is often a tool used to get children to do their chores.
When a friend heard about this, they encouraged Claudia to turn it into a book. Soon after that she published, “Do You Know The Cucuy?” and then later, “It’s Bedtime, Cucuy!” through Piñata Books–a publishing arm of Arte Público Press at the University of Houston with the mission to put forth positive views of Hispanic America and its culture.
During the pandemic, Claudia and her husband John–who also grew up in Oak Cliff by Kings Highway–each hit their 20-year anniversary in education. Claudia was back at Sunset serving as the Principal of the school. “I was hitting a mark in my career where I knew our team was in a good place, we had done really great things, and I could pass the baton on,” she said.
So they stepped back to reassess their future plans. Considering everything that had taken place throughout the pandemic, they had the opportunity to ask: Where do we really want to be, and what do we really want to do?
And then it suddenly became clear. “We realized we just wanted to be around good books and good people,” she said with a smile. Mark Twain once expressed a similar sentiment, I think, saying: “Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
Claudia and John had been planning Whose Books in their spare time. As the time came to make a decision on where to open, they were faced with a hard choice: Do we open up in a highly-trafficked touristy location, or tucked away in their neighborhood? As they considered the business through the lens of their mission–to provide diversity in books to their neighborhood and bring book access to it–the answer became clear.
“We chose Tyler station to be our place because it's in the crossroads of many neighborhoods. We wanted to be in the heart of Oak Cliff,” she said. The accessibility of Tyler Station was a major draw for them. With the train and neighborhood nearby, people can drive, walk, and ride here with ease.
Claudia was nervous to launch this business at first. But as she assessed her life, she knew that she could handle it. “I thought to myself, okay. I’ve been scared lots of times and tried lots of different things. But I’ve never really crashed and burned. So I said, ‘How bad could it be?’”
They haven’t looked back since. Business has been consistent so far, and now there is a group of regulars who frequent the shop. But they have also introduced many people to the idea of a bookstore. “At least once a week, we meet someone new who has never visited a bookstore.” When asked why anyone should actually buy a book, Claudia responds, “You pay for and listen to music, right? And listen to it over and over again? Books are no different.”
Just the other day, a customer and his family dropped by the store. The father asked, “Are you Miss Galindo? You used to be my teacher!” Claudia realized the young man was a former student from 20 years past and he and his family were now in the store shopping for books for their home. The father had stopped by the barbershop for a haircut and decided to check out the bookstore.
Last week someone DM’ed Whose Books on instagram and said, “You're making reading cool again!”
“This is why we are here: To serve our community and to become part of the fabric of living in Oak Cliff,'' shared Claudia.
Whose Books offers story time every Saturday morning, as well as regular book club meetings. And there are many other exciting things on the horizon for Whose Books, such as author events and a Bookstore on Wheels that will drive directly into the neighborhood. So stay tuned!
