Independent booksellers are our lifeblood. We count on their dedication—and their passionate recommendations to readers. In solidarity with those who are committed to social justice, we’re sharing the story of Angela Franklin. She’s making history as the founder and director of Chez Alpha Books, the first and only English-language bookstore in Dakar, Senegal. Angela holds an MFA in Enamel and Metalworking, along with another master’s in Online Education and Leadership Management. She has more than 20 years of experience in higher education administration. When her thriving studio in Baltimore burned to the ground, Angela started over. She eventually wrote a grant to study the traditional arts in Senegal, where she married and had a son. Our Editor-at-large Nadine Pinede talked to Angela about her remarkable journey, from selling books in her garage to directing an internationally-acclaimed bookstore and academic resource center.

NP: With your training as an artist and your experience in education, what led you to open a bookstore?

AF: When my son Alpha was born in 1999 in Dakar, it wasn’t easy for me to find books in English. I could find them in French, but I couldn’t always find diverse positive images easily in English. And I wanted him to have access to these books. For about 10 years, I shared and exchanged books. When we started selling books, it was originally in the garage to my home, so it was literally “Chez Alpha”! I noticed a number of people would come in, particularly students, and they couldn’t always purchase new books. But I didn't want to sell used books because when I’d seen those kind of expat book exchanges where used books were being sold, the expat community would sweep in and buy up everything. And that would take the books out of circulation. So we decided early on that we would also be a lending library. We have more than 2,000 books, and we have around 150 people borrowing them.

NP: As a working mother and artist, what was the greatest challenge in opening the bookstore and growing it in those early years?

AF: I think the challenges still exist! In the beginning, people would always say to me, “people won't read English here, people won’t read for leisure.” The emphasis was on reading for homework or for business. So we were up against that. There were also people who felt I might be trying to spread English propaganda, but that wasn't the case at all. It was about choice and great options. Staffing has been and remains an issue. We have two staff and one intern right now. I usually have no more than three at a time. In Senegal, I feel you have this great responsibility and kinship with the people working with you. It’s important that staff speak English, French, and Wolof and that they like books, or at least they're willing to learn about books. It’s important that they can work with an international and diverse community and understand the importance of serving all people well because here, there tends to be a tendency to give the best service to a person of European descent. Another surprise was that we hired students from the university who studied English, but they weren’t passionate readers. English can be viewed as a “social passport” for employment, and I have no problems with that. But people who work at Chez Alpha have to love books and stay on the leading edge of what’s going on. That’s not always easy to find.

NP: What are some other surprises you’ve encountered in running Chez Alpha?

Senegal has really high taxes, but sometimes expats come in and feel like everything should cost one dollar—even when they’re making incredible salaries. They don't think about the fact that you’re ordering books from abroad, dealing with freight and customs, etc., to get a book to your store. In Senegal, there's also a system of bargaining, so we need people to know that our prices are set. I think the whole bargaining system can lead to many other things: people can have this attitude that they’re being cheated. You can sometimes feel that you have to legitimize the service you provide and the price points. I also tell people not to assume that because you're opening a business, your friends will become your clients. In my experience, that’s only one-third of the business. You also need finance, marketing, and community outreach to drive that business.

NP: You’re clearly a passionate reader. What's your earliest memory of books?

AF: Growing up in Cincinnati, in my family once you could sign your name, which I could at five, you received a library card. On Fridays we’d walk a mile and a half to the library to borrow books. And my father was a reader. He worked at the phone company in Cincinnati, and he cleaned in a bank and a dentist office. So he would bring home books and things that he found and we’d read them.

NP: What was the first book you loved?

AF: I always tell people about The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. It was the first book I ever read that showed a young black character, a boy named Peter, in a positive way. Before that, I remember these children’s books with illustrations of black children who had super-big lips and were eating watermelon, and their mothers who were super-fat with scarves around their head. The language was just as offensive. Of course we read Pippi Longstocking, the Ramona series, and those kinds of books. But The Snowy Day was different, and it was the first children’s picture book with a black protagonist to win a Caldecott Medal. That made an impact.

Image from The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats — Image from *The Snowy Day* by Ezra Jack Keats

NP: Absolutely! The annual Ezra Jack Keats Award is given to illustrators and writers for advancing diversity in children’s literature. This year, one of our titles won a double honor: Layla’s Happiness is the debut for illustrator Ashleigh Corrin, who won the 2020 Illustrator’s Award. Its author Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie received an author's honor. Their interview is featured on our blog. You actually ordered it before the award was announced. What helped you decide, and what do you think your customers will enjoy about it?

The strength of the illustrations was really number one. I was also attracted to the story, which can be translated across cultures. It invites us to think about what makes us happy. There’s a sense of mindfulness and awareness throughout: I’m thinking of the community garden, or when Layla listens to her father’s stories of growing up in South Carolina. It’s filled with those moments of observing ordinary joys. In choosing a book, I ask myself if it will be a great experience for children to read it or for whoever is reading it to them. The reality is that not every book, even a stellar book, will transfer to Senegal and our audience. A book about a boy who misses his father who is in prison won’t resonate as much as a book about a boy who misses his father who’s had to emigrate abroad for work.

NP: What nonfiction books are appealing to your readers?

AF: For young readers it tends to be biographies, history, or fiction based on fact, even though their parents may want more instructional books, like how to learn English. Some examples of nonfiction that resonates with our younger audience is The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, Hidden Figures, The Queen of Katwe, the YA version of Trevor Noah’s memoir Born a Crime, Sisters and Champions about Venus and Serena Williams, and Betty Before X, inspired by the life of Betty Shabazz.

NP: What do you think makes this kind of nonfiction attractive?

AF: There could be several reasons. One is when we give them a book that they’ve already heard something about. An example is the books that have been adapted for film, and then they’re often stories of endurance and resilience, like the story Micheala DePrince [who was orphaned in Sierra Leone’s civil war, then shunned and abused because of her vitiligo, before being adopted]. She’s now a prima ballerina for the Dutch National Ballet. I told them Micheala appeared in Beyoncé’s video Lemonade!

NP: Please tell us about your Summer Reading Program that was recently featured on Radio France International.

AF: The idea is to challenge students to read a certain number of books that they select for themselves for the summer. All the research shows that when it comes to summer reading, it’s more fun for kids to choose their own books. Participants range from age 7 to 17, with most in the 8 to 12 group. What we do is prepare some “Chez Alpha money” that can be spent on books in the store. If they read books from certain categories, such as a story about a family in Africa in a country other than Senegal, they earn a certain amount of money. Students who read a minimum number of books also vie for other prizes and receive a certificate.

NP: What kinds of books attract them?

AF: They tend to gravitate to series, or to biographies and memoirs. We noticed that boys tend to read comics and graphic novels. Unfortunately, most parents don’t consider that quality reading. But I think there’s a lot you can take from a good graphic novel. The trick is to put books in the hands of boys and keep them engaged in reading. For all children, we want their parents to know that reading shouldn’t only become related to homework. It should be a part of their life that brings them joy.

NP: Do you have a favorite story about connecting children's books with readers?

AF: Something that surprised me is the passion that parents have for books that deal with self-image in terms of skin and color. I thought that in Africa that wouldn't be such a big issue. No one would care. But I was wrong about that. Parents are looking for picture books about these issues, like My Hair is a Garden written and illustrated by Cozbi Cabrera, and Sulwe, written by Lupita Nyog’o and illustrated by Vashti Harrison. Sulwe flies off the shelves! It’s about a dark-skinned girl who initially wants to be lighter but who comes to love her skin color. Colorism is still a problem in Africa and around the world.

NP: An important part of your mission is to focus on books by writers from Senegal, Africa, and the Diaspora. I know you work closely with African Publishers to make sure their books are well represented, yet you’ve faced formidable challenges at every level. Can you share a concrete example?

AF: On the continent, you can rarely engage with DHL, FedEx, or UPS because their prices are exorbitant. Here’s one example: We carry books published by Cauris Livres in Mali. But getting them shipped here is an adventure. They put their books on a “bush taxi” that goes from Mali to Senegal. At each connecting point, the driver hands off the books. Ultimately, they’ll call us and say, “Okay, we have your package and you can come pick it up.” That’s from the taxi depot in Dakar. It's always an adventure, but it does get the books to us in an affordable way. Most people don’t realize how hard it is to ship books. I’ve always thought we need an active association for bookstores in Africa, and recently, I’ve been in contact with a group that shares this vision. I think this would help us all with things like shipping.

NP: Like many other independent bookstores, you’re a community touchstone. In addition to the Summer Reading Program, at Chez Alpha you have a lending library, English-language classes, college test prep, and study abroad counseling. How did you decide to expand your services?

AF: It was all based on client interest. I was selling books in English, and then people said I want to learn English. So we started teaching English. Then they said, I want to study abroad where they speak English. I told them they’d need to take standardized tests in English, like the TOEFL and SAT.

NP: Was that the genesis of the College Club?

AF: For me, it was a natural connection because people would ask for advice about colleges and universities. So it all came together. We research and present a range of schools that meet their criteria in places like the US, Canada, the UK, Dubai, and the United Arab Emirates. I also have to remind them that there are excellent options in Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, and other African countries. And I often have to fight the mentality that “the best is in the west.”

NP: Your experience with study abroad programs and living in many different countries must have been helpful with this. What else do you discuss?

AF: Sometimes international students will just go to class and back to their rooms. They think the best thing is to have an incredible GPA. They may not take advantage of all the other resources, like faculty office hours, or extracurricular activities. Then you may have faculty who have a more casual attitude and want to be called by their first names, and our students are often used to more formality. We also talk about what it means to live with strangers: in some cases, that includes white people, who are sometimes called “toubabs” here in Senegal. It’s important to prepare students to live, study, and work with diverse communities. We want them to thrive when they go abroad! Some of them have safety concerns. The majority are Muslim. In a program we call "Level Up," we have frank discussions about all sorts of things. We discuss Amadou Diallo, the Guinean immigrant killed by New York police. He was unarmed when he was shot 41 times. This was years before Black Lives Matter, which the students know about, though their parents may not.

NP: Have you seen how literacy and the power of reading has changed someone's life?

AF: Definitely! Former students will come in years later and say they studied English with Madame Angela at Chez Alpha. Now they’re working at a good job. Or they’ll return with their young children to use the lending library and get the latest book recommendations. When I hear stories like this, I know we’re having an impact, and that’s what’s important.

NP: Is there one book for young readers you consistently recommend?

AF: The Anna Hibiscus Series is always selling out. It’s eight books set in urban Africa, about a girl living with her African father and Canadian mother in a loving, multi-generational family.

I’m often recommending the Jannah Jewels series. They’re chapter books about four friends who are Muslim girls. They travel through time and face adventures in places like 14th century Timbuktu to solve cases. We have so many Muslim girls as readers, and with the Islamic history and references, we know the text and language will be in check.

NP: If you had more funding and space, what would you do with it?

AF: Literacy, literacy, literacy! If I had more funds I would definitely do more partnering with schools. I’d start with primary schools because I think you definitely have to get them young to make reading an important part of their lives. I’d also expand the bookstore and offer more titles, along with coffee and tea. My dream is to organize a contemporary and multicultural book fair in Dakar, with featured publishers, book sales, and writers’ workshops. Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya all have phenomenal book fairs. People here would also love to see Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and other authors that will bring everybody out.

NP: Based on your own experiences, what would you say are the most common misconceptions about Africa? Can books help change these?

AF: I think one misconception is that there is no middle class in Africa, and the only stories we have to tell are stories of starvation and famine and hardship. But like anywhere else in the world, there are families here raising children. They want to see them persevere and thrive. There are stories of resilience. Maybe some come from a background of poverty, but money isn’t the only way to measure wealth. It’s important that people know there’s a diverse range of stories to be heard here: there are superheroes, those who dared to dream and rebel, women who persisted and resisted. Contemporary African writers should be read by everyone. It's just not all poverty and AIDS and Ebola. Everything is here!

[NOTE: This interview was conducted before the spread of Covid-19. Since that time, Senegal has been recognized for its humane and thorough approach in confronting the pandemic. ]

A Conversation with Angela Franklin, Owner of Chez Alpha Books in Dakar, Senegal