StoryCorps Shorts: The Bookmobile

Storm Reyes: The conditions were pretty terrible.

I once told someone that I learned to fight with a knife long before I learned how to ride a bicycle.

And when you are grinding day after day after day, there is no room in you for hope.

You don't even know it exists.

There's nothing to aspire to except filling your hungry belly.

That's how I was raised.

But when I was 12, a bookmobile came to the fields.

And you have to understand that I wasn't allowed to have books, because books are heavy, and when you're moving a lot you have to keep things just as minimal as possible.

So when I saw this big vehicle on the side of the road, and it was filled with books, I immediately stepped back.

Fortunately when the staff member saw me, kind of waved me in, and said, "These are books, and you can take one home."

I'm like, "What's the catch?"

And he explained to me there was no catch.

Then he asked me what I was interested in.

And the night before the bookmobile had come, in the camps, there was an elder who was telling us about the day that Mount Rainier blew up.

So I told the bookmobile person that I was a little nervous about the mountain blowing up.

And he said, "You know, the more you know about something, the less you will fear it."

And then he gave me a book about volcanoes.

And then I saw a book about dinosaurs.

I said "Oh, that looks neat."

So he gave me a book about dinosaurs.

And I took them home, and I devoured them.

I didn't just read them, I devoured them.

And I came back in two weeks and had more questions.

And he gave me more books and that started it.

That taught me that hope was not just a word.

And it gave me the courage to leave the camps.

That's where the books made the difference.

By the time I was 15, I knew there was a world outside of the camps.

I believed I could find a place in it.

And I did.