{"id":30788,"date":"2022-02-10T19:31:56","date_gmt":"2022-02-11T00:31:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=30788"},"modified":"2022-02-10T19:40:25","modified_gmt":"2022-02-11T00:40:25","slug":"local-bookstore-highlighting-diverse-voices-supporting-black-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/local-bookstore-highlighting-diverse-voices-supporting-black-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Local bookstore highlighting diverse voices, supporting Black Community"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hailing from a Persian background, local book lover Loba Fallah knows all too well the importance of highlighting and promoting diverse voices \u2013 and that\u2019s exactly what she\u2019s doing at Bookworms & Company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bookworms & Company, a bookstore located in St. Andrew\u2019s Village at the corner of Yonge and Orchard Heights Boulevard, opened this past fall challenging the idea of a traditional bookstore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her aim was to create \u201ca little home for people locally where they can come, where they can chat,\u201d and, once COVID restrictions are fully lifted, where they can gather to celebrate a love for the written word and eclectic voices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to just necessarily be a place where you can come and pick up a book and it\u2019s a faceless store,\u201d says Fallah. \u201cWe want it to be a place where people get to know each other, where people can have book clubs, reading time, story time, and just a social hour for parents or teenagers, and everyone else as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is through this idea of creating a space where people can get to know each other that Bookworms & Company became involved with the Aurora Black Community Association (ABC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout Black History Month, the store is sharing an array of books written by Black voices, with 10 per cent of the proceeds from each sale through February going to the ABC\u2019s I Can Swim program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn Canada, immigrants are less likely to learn to swim or to participate recreationally,\u201d says the ABC of the initiative. \u201cMost Canadian newcomers come from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. With the stereotype that most assume that coming from the Caribbean coming from water, we must all be fish or expert swimmers [but] that is not the reality. We aim to fund swimming lessons for ten families \u2013 adults and children \u2013 who want to learn swimming, a life skill that all should have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fallah\u2019s aim is to not only support the program but introduce local readers to voices they might not have previously enjoyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis just came naturally to also be able to promote Black History Month and bring over all the diverse voices, from fiction to non-fiction, to children, to everything else \u2013 even a jigsaw puzzle I found,\u201d she says. \u201cWe want to help the community and work with local organizations and companies; I have been doing that anyway with a lot of other things as well in terms of trying to feature local authors, local makers and artists and everything else as well, so this just came naturally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have lived in Aurora for seven years. I am still learning about all the different organizations. People come in and suggest different things and I understand it more and understand this may be in line with what I want to do and go forward with it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the books highlighted in their display are \u201c28 Days: Moments in Black History that Changed the World\u201d by Charles R. Smith, \u201cThe Black History Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained\u201d, \u201cBecoming,\u201d the memoir of former U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama, \u201cThe Autobiography of Malcolm X\u201d, and two of her own personal favourites, \u201cWhat I Know for Sure\u201d by Oprah Winfrey and \u201cThe Momba Mentality: How I Play\u201d by the late basketball great Kobe Bryant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI only have three books on my bedside table and two of those are \u2018What I Know for Sure\u2019 and \u2018The Momba Mentality,\u2019\u201d says Fallah. \u201cThey are filled with little life lessons you can pick up and read a little bit every day. Both of those books are the types you can crack open to any page and find something that resonates with you. It gives you a little more insight and takes you away from your current problems and makes you step back and look at it from a different perspective. That\u2019s what I find good about these books, \u2018Momba Mentality\u2019 especially because of the way he approaches life \u2013 and with Oprah, the amount of adversity she went through just to become who she is now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more on Bookworms & Co. visit\u00a0www.bookwormsco.com<\/a>\u00a0or call 905-750-0130.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hailing from a Persian background, local book lover Loba Fallah knows all too well the importance of highlighting and promoting diverse voices \u2013 and that\u2019s exactly what she\u2019s doing at Bookworms & Company.  Bookworms & Company, a bookstore located in St. Andrew\u2019s Village at the corner of Yonge and Orchard Heights Boulevard, opened this past […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/2022-02-10-06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-80A","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-18 08:48:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}