Book exchange will be shops’ first act of diplomacy

what other cultures look like,” she said.

Countries have been exchanging historical pieces and art for years, said Deirdre White, CEO of PYXERA Global, the parent company of the Center for Citizen Diplomacy.

When countries engage in exchanges and friendship agreements, benefits follow, White explained.

“It’s getting people to think about … the value of cross-border cooperation and hopefully getting a taste of that and thinking of other ways they might apply that,” she said.

The stores plan to exchange Spanish and English books as the first act of diplomacy and hope the friendship develops into the stores becoming greeting points for travelers from the other country.

Jim Toole, 80, the owner of Capitol Hill Books, said it’s fitting the Mexico bookstore is named after an English story, promoting the solidarity that comes with a shared love of literacy.

“We’re going around, over and through (the wall),” Toole said. “We’re going through that wall from an intellectual and not a physical standpoint. The physical standpoint is the books.”

“With all of the nonsensible talk, and the kind of silly talk, about building a wall between two countries … it seemed like a really good time to respond to that in a small way,” said Kyle Burk, the sotook cial media manager for Capitol Hill Books.

Burk also is a contract employee for Mexican Embassy in D.C., where he writes and translates for the communications team.

Toole, a two-star rear admiral during the Vietnam War, took ownership of the bookstore about seven blocks east of the U.S. Capitol in 1994 and filled every corner of the building with a clutter of used books and snarky book descriptions. Customers browse mystery books upstairs in the room where the former owner, an ex-priest, died of a heart attack, and on the lower level they find a bathroom stuffed with foreign language books.

“Since this country’s foreign language (use) is in the toilet, I my toilet room and made it my foreign language room,” Toole said with a laugh.

More seriously, Toole explained he hopes the memorandum will stimulate an influx of foreign language books from Mexico to the shop and bring in more Spanishspeaking residents from the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

On Monday, Trump reiterated his concerns about Mexico, saying drugs are pouring in over the border. “We need a wall in this country,” he said. “You know it, I know it, everybody knows it.”

Toole said, “Our mission is to try and overcome some of the bad things that are being said with any relationship with Mexico and instill an increased concern for literacy.”