Spanish-Language Bookstore Can’t Be Judged by Its Cover

HIGHLAND PARK —  At first glance, Arroyo Books looks as if it might not be in the neighborhood to stay. The paper signs that spell out the bookstore’s name in Spanish and English are Scotch-taped to the windows, and the paint looks slapped on.

But the Spanish-language bookstore has sunk its roots in Highland Park.

The 1,200-square-foot bookstore at 5505 N. Figueroa St. has become a cultural center for its community, serving as a mini-gallery for local artists and as host to after-hours poetry workshops and community meetings.

And it is building a reputation outside its area. Arroyo Books furnishes children’s titles to about 40 schools in California and other Western states, owners Philip Gillette and his wife, Florencia Teran, say. About 30 public and university libraries also purchase their books.

Lou Negrete, a professor of Chicano studies at Cal State Los Angeles, said Arroyo Books “has the best collection I’ve seen of (bilingual) books and materials” for children through the sixth grade. And he praised the Chicano literature collection.

On a recent Sunday, more than 50 people packed the bookstore to hear L.A. Weekly senior editor Ruben Martinez give a reading of his poetry and essays. Also on the program was Larry Siems, who read from “Between the Lines,” his recently published collection of letters by Latino immigrants and their families and friends.

“It’s a place where you hang out and talk politics,” Carol Jacques of Mt. Washington said after the readings segued into a question-and-answer session on immigration issues. “Normally, we would have to go to West Los Angeles to have this kind of experience.” Her most recent purchase: a cassette of Native American music.

To Ann Walnum, a music teacher who lives in Mt. Washington, Arroyo Books is part of a local arts renaissance. She points to the Arroyo Arts Collective, formed by local artists in 1989 to make Highland Park a haven for the arts and to hold exhibits, and the Hunchback Cafe on Avenue 57, a theater and coffeehouse in its first year of business, as signs that the community is coming alive as a center for artists.

Jacques, who sits on the advisory council for Arroyo Seco Art in the Park, a division of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, also sees Arroyo Books as part of a revitalization of the area.

“It’s very exciting what’s happening in this neighborhood. Figueroa (Street) is going to come back as a kind of Greenwich Village,” she predicted.

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Arroyo Books is a family business. Gillette, a part-time sociology teacher, and Teran, a vice principal at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic school in East Los Angeles, work side by side with Gillette’s son Christopher, 27.

Gillette, 52, has been dealing in books the longest of the three. He began collecting Spanish-language books and selling them in the late 1960s while earning a master’s degree in Latin American Studies from UCLA. He began hoarding books even earlier.

“When I was in high school, my parents had to have a special bookcase built in my room. I spent all my money on books and didn’t have a bicycle until I was in high school,” he said.

Before opening the store in August, 1990, Teran and Gillette distributed books from their Mt. Washington home. But the piles of books began to cramp their lifestyle. “Either you ate dinner standing up or moved (the business) out” of the house, said Gillette.

Gillette doesn’t have a grand explanation for his fascination with Latino culture. “It just happened,” he said. However, a Peruvian girlfriend was responsible for his area of specialization, Peru.

To date, Gillette says, he has made no money from the bookstore, but he doesn’t seem to worry. He loves books--so much that he often cannot part from his purchases, which mostly come from Latin American publishers.

“We end up taking a lot of things home,” said Teran, who helps out at Arroyo Books on weekends and during her vacations.

State and local budget cuts will reduce sales to two of Gillette’s major customers, libraries and school districts--which make up half his business, but “we’ll survive,” he said. “If we were in this to make money, we would have closed a long time ago.”

Despite the large number of Latino immigrants in Los Angeles, Arroyo Books is one of only a handful of major local Spanish-language stores in the city, including the Spanish and European Book Store in Hancock Park and Libreria Buenos Aires in West Los Angeles.

One of Arroyo Books’ focuses is children’s books. Gillette said he probably sells more children’s literature than anything else. His collection of 2,200 titles lures bilingual teachers, who have difficulty securing material in Spanish for their classes.

Before the Sunday reading, a pair of bilingual elementary school teachers from the Pasadena school district eyed the children’s section of the store hungrily. “We can’t find a lot of Spanish books,” said Pilar Saldana, who teaches first and second grade at Altadena Elementary School. “When we saw this (store), with so many books in Spanish, it was like, wow.”

Arroyo Books’ collection of 12,000 titles extends well beyond material for children. The store has as many as 7,000 out-of-print titles, including obscure items like copies of Mexican and Guatemalan laws from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are books on art, anthropology, archeology, history, politics and cooking. Many books on Latino themes are in English.

The reference section offers the definitive two-volume Spanish dictionary published by the Spanish Royal Academy, as well as a guide to the grammar of the Cahuilla, a Native American tribe in Riverside County.

One regular customer, Michele Ramos, an aerospace technician, comes from Lawndale to browse through the store’s substantial collection of books on Chicano literature, history and art.

On her way out the door with the day’s purchases--a history of Mexican-Americans, a book about the Latino neighborhoods in Los Angeles, and another about the Chicano student movement in Southern California--Ramos was full of praise for Arroyo Books.

Ramos said she first visited the store last September for a reading. When she returned three months later, she was delighted to discover that Gillette remembered her name. “I’m used to going to a store where I’m just a face,” Ramos said.

At Arroyo Books, “they treat you like you’re an extension of their family.”