The House of SpeakEasy has created a way to bring stories to the underprivileged in NYC, here’s how.
Last Christmas, New York City made the news when a Manhattan-based non-profit delivered reading materials to the inhabitants of the city out of a large portable bookmobile. Since then, the non-profit has only continued to donate books and work to promote literacy up and down the East Coast and across the country. We’re here to explain who they are, and why they were giving out free books (and where you might find them next!).
The bookmobile is a modified box truck. Inside it, there is 54 feet of shelf space, all designed to safely carry books on the go. The non-profit, House of SpeakEasy, drive the bookmobile up and down the country, stopping in areas that have been termed ‘book deserts’.
A book desert is an area that is somewhat too significantly deprived of printed books and reading materials. In these areas, books and other reading materials are hard to obtain, especially for those without a car or income for other means of transportation. This is often caused by a lack of public libraries and other public services. Research into these book deserts and how they can impact children’s language and communication skills has shown that it can dramatically affect their educational attainment, emotional development and cognitive development.
By bringing the books to these book deserts and breaking down the barriers between these less fortunate families and reading, the bookmobile and House of SpeakEasy hope to increase literacy and better support children, but also provide adults with the chance to read for pleasure, which has been linked to increased confidence, decreased stress and increased inspiration.
In 2019, the bookmobile made its way across 4,000 miles, stopping in 18 cities in a ‘Poetry to the People Tour’. They distributed 5,000 books across 14 states, and were described as ‘hope on wheels’. Since then they’ve worked in collaboration with NYC’s Department of Transportation, Brooklyn Book Festival, Brooklyn Public Library and Made for Me Books.
After the pandemic, the bookmobile worked with the New York City Housing Authority to deliver books, backpacks and school supplies to needy boroughs. In short, the people behind SpeakEasy understand, after working with and as writers, how hard getting a bookstore going can be, and subsequently why there are so few of them. Large numbers of New Yorkers simply live too far from their nearest bookstore, and libraries are defunded all the time – so the bookmobile is bridging that gap!
Who Is House of SpeakEasy?
The House of SpeakEasy has a few different focuses. A large part of their work is based around bringing authors and their audiences together in ‘innovative and sustaining ways’, and another focuses on the idea that literature matters. It is this latter part that led to the development of the bookmobile.
The House of SpeakEasy’s foundation, the SpeakEasy Foundation, offers three educational programs aimed at reaching a broader community. By working through these three avenues, the foundation hopes to create connections in communities that are underserved by ‘traditional deliverers of literary culture’.
These three avenues are SpeakFreely, which makes free tickets available to shows for students and teachers in New York City, SpeakTogether, which pairs writers with students and teachers in public schools across NYC, and The SpeakEasy Bookmobile, which delivers new books to neighborhoods with no bookstores or libraries.
So far, SpeakEasy’s bookmobile has allowed them to provide targeted book distribution, including to minorities. They worked with Albertine Books, for example, to provide the Haitian diaspora of NYC books in French and English.
The bookmobile was out this summer, stopping in Hell’s Kitchen, Washington Heights, Coney Island, Red Hook, and The Bronx.
There are new dates and stops added to the bookmobile’s list all the time, so if you or your family would like to visit and get your hands on some free donated books, visit the House of SpeakEasy website.
The History of Bookmobiles
The SpeakEasy bookmobile is wonderful, but it is not the first of its kind. It is part of a long, long history of mobile bookselling and roaming libraries, the earliest of which can be dated as far back as the mid-19th century!
Back then, of course, it wasn’t a box truck. The first bookmobile, ran by Librarian Mary Titcomb, used a horse-drawn wagon for her book delivery purposes. When asked about her bookmobile, she simply said ‘the book goes to the man, not waiting for the man to come to the book’.
Other Bookmobiles in New York City
If you’re afraid you’ve missed out, or you’re not sure whether The SpeakEasy bookmobile will reach you, you’re in luck! There are other mobile book possibilities around!
For example, the New York Public Library runs a regular bookmobile which you can follow online. At the bookmobile, you can browse books, speak with a librarian, return and renew books and sign up for a library card.
The bookmobile frequents The Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island.
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Migz
Millie Ramm
Millie has been writing since she was a child, and has spent more time with her nose in books than anywhere else. She has been ghostwriting novels and editing for the past few years, and when not working she is curled up with her cats, looking for her next read.
