Tracy Ramey wants readers to see themselves reflected in Tastes & Tomes

Tracy Ramey was working as an educator when Covid hit. As one means of helping her young students navigate this uncertain new world, she began hosting story time readings, which she hoped might return some sense of normalcy to school-aged children whose routines had been completely upended.

“It was out of concern for my children, my students, and I thought it might help them to see someone who they’d seen before,” Ramey said in early May. “And it was kind of for me, too, helping me to process and deal with things.”

In the years that have since passed, this initial seed of an idea has continued to grow and develop within Ramey, taking flower last year as Tastes & Tomes, a literary pop-up that debuted at the South Drive-In Flea Market and will return for its first event of 2025 at the Fourth Street Night Market in Italian Village on Thursday, May 8. Focused on books by authors representing the global majority and centering characters who tend to be underrepresented within the literary world, including people of color, the disabled, and members of the LGBTQ+ community, Ramey said her hope is that readers from a range of underserved populations will see their lives and experiences reflected in her curated selections.

“The power of seeing yourself represented [in literature] is immense. It can take you to another stratosphere,” said Ramey, a voracious reader from childhood who at times struggled to see herself in the literature she absorbed, pointing Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry as one rare exception. “That was one of the first middle school books I found that had me in it, and there were so many others that did not. … We definitely need mirrors and windows. We need books that show us other experiences, and we also need books that represent our lived experiences.”

In building out the collection for Tastes & Tomes, Ramey said she has considered a wealth of experiences, bringing in books that feature the neurodivergent, immigrants, and people with diabetes, among myriad others. As just one example, Ramey pointed to her recent discovery of Columbus author Mirando Montoya, who this year published her debut children’s book, Petunia Moves Again, which tells the story of a family of migrating chipmunks and is rooted in the frequent relocations the author experienced growing up with a migrant worker as a father.

In her pop-up, Ramey also prioritizes those authors whose work has been targeted by lawmakers for removal from school libraries – “These are books that need to be out there in the world,” she said – while sidestepping writers whose politics have long outstripped their literary contributions, including one high-profile TERF who could now be referred to as She Who Shall Not Be Named.

Ramey described the journey to Tastes & Tomes as tumultuous, the idea hatched amid a pandemic and developed parallel to a divorce – a series of events that left the entrepreneur struggling with self-doubt to such a degree that she nearly scrapped the entire project on several occasions.

“For the longest time the process was, ‘Okay, I’m gonna get this started,’ and then, ‘I can’t because I don’t know what I’m doing.’ So there have been a lot of ebbs and flows, but even in those periods of inactivity the business has always been in the back of my mind, this persistent [understanding] that this is something important to me, and that it could be something good for the community,” said Ramey, who traced one tipping point to a conversation with a friend that took place a couple of years ago, and who punctuated the shared detail with a sharp, well-timed laugh. “I told him about this idea, and that I wanted to have a bookmobile, and he was like, ‘That’s stupid.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, is it now?’ So, yeah, sometimes I’m able to run on spite.”

In some ways, the extended development process proved a boon, allowing Ramey to establish processes and to conduct extensive online research into everything from how to start a business account to the ways independent sellers can go about purchasing books for sale. She has also received advice and support as part of BincTank, a pilot program designed to incubate BIPOC entrepreneurs to open bookstores in underserved communities, while getting direct, on-the-ground training working as a purchaser for Clintonville Books. 

“And all of these things have given me a lot of confidence, knowing what I can and can’t do within the industry,” said Ramey, who plans to expand on the Tastes & Tomes concept in the coming months with the purchase of a vehicle she can transform into a mobile bookshop to more routinely access the city’s literary deserts.

Ramey’s growing convictions were further bolstered by a 2024 pop-up event at Chef Hiro on Parsons Avenue, during which she displayed alongside fellow Black makers, including a crochet artist and a woman with her own line of skincare products. “And people were making a beeline to my table,” she said. “Sometimes I would have pop-ups where I lost money because nobody would buy anything, and it would be like, ‘I’m not looking for this right now.’ And it was just so affirming to have people who look like me out to support, and I left there in such a good place.”