Tracing My Love of Books

I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school, but because my mother took me to the library.
Sandra Cisneros

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
Jorge Luis Borges


My first home—which nostalgia has since consecrated—was an second-story apartment on Olive Street, near the intersection of Grand and Vernon Avenues, in South Central Los Angeles. The city block on which I once lived no longer stands; the land was ceded to allow for the expansion of Vernon Avenue School, the first educational institution I ever attended. And although the building I spent the first seven years of my life was razed long ago, I find great comfort knowing that it succumbed to a cause that’s sacred to me.

Across the street from my first home, on the northwestern corner, was the neighborhood’s public library. Before I could even walk, or so my mother tells me, my father, who was an avid reader, would take me along whenever he needed yet another book. And he went there frequently, as I clearly recall.

And, regardless of the many years that have slipped away between then and now, from the recesses of my earliest of childhood memories I can still conjure up the feeling of being in a sacred space, on hallowed ground, where grown-ups spoke in hushed voices amid the comforting smell of aging paper. I remember feeling utterly safe while inside the building’s red brick walls; and a blessed sense of peace filled me as I strolled down the massive aisles—at least they seemed so to me back then—picking out books to leaf through while sitting on the carpeted floor.

My time there was so luminous, so full of discoveries that I came to believe that the bookshelves surrounding me, poised as tall as mountains, held the sum of all human knowledge.

These short voyages of my early childhood, holding my father’s hand during the short walk from my home to the library, are, without a doubt, the first steps on my journey toward becoming a writer.

Since my Olive Street beginnings I’ve spent countless hours in mammoth libraries, some of them larger than cathedrals, gathering knowledge from—as well as finding inspiration in—the writings of others.

Yet, in spite of my affection and admiration for those vast sanctuaries of wisdom—including the Library of Congress—I will always trace my love for the written word to that small South Central Los Angeles library that, according to the search I conducted online, no longer stands today.