When Nneka Ruiz Montalvo learned about the tragic murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota in May 2020, she felt the need to do something.
Not being one to take up signs and protest, she decided to propagate something that was a positive influence and impactful to her as she grew up – reading.
“I felt so sad to see how he was treated (by the police) as if he just did not matter. I ended up thinking about my son growing up in a world where people who look like him are treated as if they don’t matter. He’d have to face discrimination from the police etc and it made me think I had to do something to make a lasting, positive change in the world.
“I wanted my son and other children like him, children of colour, to grow up to have a high self-esteem so they feel as if they really matter, to feel affirmed and validated.”
A few months later, she opened My Reflections Children’s Bookstore which, at the time, was an online store. The idea was to make a powerful impact on the children of TT by allowing them to see themselves in the books they read.
Ruiz Montalvo recalled that as a child she read many books but never one with a character that looked like her. The same can be said for many adults, and even today, children grow up wishing they had straight hair or blue eyes because that is what is represented in the books they read. So they either want to be like that or feel left out.
“Books are meant to be both mirrors and windows. Children get the ‘mirror’ experience when they see someone similar to them in the books they read, with regard to their ethnicity, cultural background and belief system. This ‘mirror’ experience is very important for a child’s self-image.
“Children get the ‘window’ experience when they read books with characters different from them. The ‘window’ experience is essential for a child to be open-minded, compassionate and see the world from another person’s point of view.
“When African or Indian children are only exposed to books with Caucasian or animal characters, they never benefit from the ‘mirror’ experience.”
So, at the time of Floyd’s death, with the feeling that she needed her then four-year-old son, Matthew Ruiz Montalvo, to grow up knowing his worth, Ruiz Montalvo took a long, hard look at his bookshelf and noticed his books had only animal or Caucasian characters.
She later learned from US publishing statistics that the vast majority of characters in children’s books are 50 per cent Caucasian, 27 per cent animals, ten per cent African, seven per cent Asian, five per cent Latinx, and one per cent Native American/First Nations. And that seven per cent of Asian includes characters from all parts of Asia and the Pacific Islands, such as Korea, China, the Philippines, Cambodia, India and others.
“I wanted to get my son excited about reading, to love reading and have reading as a very important part of his life, and I wanted him to feel validated and see himself in books. So I decided to get him books in which characters look like him.”
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