Cristina Ramirez at the Varina Library (Photo by Jay Paul)
While growing up, Cristina Ramirez always found herself surrounded by books. Whether she was exploring her dad’s sizable collection of texts, tagging along to university libraries with her parents — both were professors — or making annual pilgrimages with her mom to a favorite Madrid bookstore while visiting grandparents, shelves piled high with weighty tomes felt like home.
“It’s always been a very nerdy kind of life,” says Ramirez, who was born in Los Angeles and lived in New York, Texas, Louisiana and the Washington, D.C., area before moving to Richmond.
So it made sense for Ramirez to share her lifelong passion for learning with others as a librarian. She’s now an assistant manager at Henrico County’s Varina Library after stints at the Sandston branch and Richmond’s Broad Rock Library.
In recognition of her focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, she was to receive Virginia Commonwealth University’s Unsung Heroes Award during the 14th Excellence in Virginia Government Awards ceremony, originally scheduled for April 15. The event has been postponed until the spring of 2021 in light of coronavirus concerns.
The daughter of retired professors with Mexican and Spanish heritage, Ramirez has seen the local Latino population grow in recent years, but she says those residents often don’t realize they have access to free resources offered by her library, including English courses, after-school homework help and assistance navigating the citizenship application process. She’s committed to changing that through outreach efforts at community events, her monthly show on Radio Poder (WBTK 1380 AM) and, most often, as a friendly face for Latino families who may be visiting the library for the first time.
As one of the area’s few Spanish-speaking librarians, she’s seen firsthand the hindrances that language barriers can create, along with the value of cultural representation. Latinos accounted for just under 10% of the nation’s librarians in 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“One of the big messages I’ve tried to let every system I’ve worked in know is we have great resources, but we need to also have more people that … the public can relate to,” Ramirez says.
She recalls meeting a young girl at the Broad Rock Library who was translating between English and Spanish for her mom. Ramirez began speaking in Spanish, and she saw a spark of excitement in the girl’s expression.
“Her eyes opened up, and she’s like, ‘You’re like me,’ and I said, ‘Yes, I am, and you can do this, too, one day,’ ” Ramirez says. “I think that is so crucial for kids coming in that are being raised here, that are being born in this country, to see that they can also have these types of professions and jobs.”
