A Bookstore Like No Other in Mexico
Over the winter holidays, our family vacationed on the Mayan Riviera. As part of the trip, I reconnected with an old friend from graduate school who lives in Playa del Carmen, Mexico and has opened an amazing bookstore there.
Libreria Mundo (or Small World Books) is a bookstore with tall wood bookshelves and colorful murals. The store is filled with Mayan art books and thousands of books published in Spanish. There are also sections for books in English, French, and German and a special room devoted to children’s books with appropriately small chairs and inviting places to read.
My friend, Sonja, who is originally from Houston, Texas, moved to Mexico in 2003. Along with her husband and his family who are from Playa del Carmen, they have built one of the largest bookstores in the region. In the Yucatan Peninsula, an area where most residents have never before walked into a bookstore or library, Sonja’s vision is to make reading and literacy a greater part of people’s lives. She hopes to encourage a lifestyle of reading books and organizes activities like storytelling for the children. Sometimes, when bringing in their children to the store, parents are also discovering the new possibilities of literacy.
In addition to being an independent bookstore, Libreria Mundo has a nonprofit branch that supports literacy activities in the region. Sales of the used books (mostly sold to tourists from U.S., Canada, and Europe) go to subsidize the price of textbooks for schoolchildren in the area. And there are many more plans in the works at Libreria Mundo to improve the literacy and educational rates throughout the Yucatan Peninsula.
In a place where book-toting tourists, such as myself, are keenly aware of the economic inequities that exist in Mexico, Sonja’s work and the success of Libreria Mundo is something I could not be more thrilled about.
Sonja (right) and I at her bookstore, Libreria Mundo.