3 minute read
Throws in the towel
C4 THE DAVIS ENTERPRISE Voices of America FRIDAY, JULY 2, 2021NJ Mvondo: Rocking multiculturalism for families
By CaleB Hampton Enterprise staff writer
NJ Mvondo is an artist, writer, entrepreneur and founder of Multiculturalism Rocks, an umbrella under which she operates a pop-up bookstore, a publishing imprint and an arts initiative. Over the past decade, she has worked to make multicultural children’s books more accessible to families in Davis and beyond.
Born and raised in Cameroon, stories were important to Mvondo from an early age as a way to express herself and to overcome childhood traumas.
“We have a tradition of storytelling,” Mvondo said of her Bulu tribe. “We use stories not just to entertain ourselves but to teach each other, to celebrate each other and as a tool to help each other heal.”
Mvondo showed an early knack for creativity and entrepreneurship. When she was 7, she authored a series of short stories, which she made copies of and sold to her classmates. She succeeded in reaching her revenue objectives, bringing in enough money to buy herself an ice cream.
Mvondo also loved reading books as a child. “The ones that spoke to me the most were the ones of resilience,” she said. “Living in Cameroon, I was lucky to have access to stories with kids in them that looked like me.”
Mvondo, a local artist, entrepreneur and founder of Multiculturalism Rocks, reads a poem at a community reading event in Central Park in June 2020.
Caleb Hampton/ enterprise file pHoto
NJ Mvondo
After moving to the Bay Area for college in 2004, Mvondo got a job in an independent bookstore. Specializing in children’s books, she noticed a disconnect between the store’s customers and the content of the books. “The families who were shopping at the store were culturally diverse,” she said, “but there weren’t many books with kids who were not white.”
Mvondo began doing her own research to find children’s books by authors from different backgrounds. She compiled lists and gave them to the store’s book buyer. “The books I recommended sold very quickly,” she said. “People were craving them.”
After moving to Davis in 2009, Mvondo founded Multiculturalism Rocks as a blog to review and recommend children’s books written by people of color. As more and more of her friends became parents and expressed how hard it was to find children’s books with Black or brown characters, Mvondo began thinking about how to make those books more accessible.
In 2017, she bought a business license, a foldable table and 10 copies of 10 different titles. The first event she went to with her pop-up bookstore was the International Festival in Davis. “I sold out of several titles,” she said. Among her customers were several teachers looking for books for their classrooms.
This year, Multiculturalism Rocks became its own company through which Mvondo continues to sell books online and at events, publish new books and run the Healing Arts Project, a collaboration exploring how art can be used as a medium for healing. Mvondo recently organized a virtual festival for Juneteenth and regularly works on projects with the Yolo County Library.
While multicultural books for children have become easier to access — thanks to the efforts of people like her — Mvondo said there is still work to do. “Today, it is so much better than before, but the work is still needed,” she said. “I’m hoping I’ll continue to be able to serve the community.
