Mitchell in Mosvideo

It was a normal Sunday afternoon for Mitchell Rumanov. He woke up, ate breakfast, went to the gym, and then went to work. Mitchell is 16 years old, and has been working at his parents’ bookstore for years. When he was a little boy, he used to run around the aisles playing with the various books and toys for sale there. As he got older, he began to help out more more. He graduated from sweeping the floor, to stocking shelves, to now working at the register. He learned to read at the age of four, and would often spend his time after school reading books rather than playing outside with friends. His parents had to keep him at the store because they could not afford day care, so he found refuge in books. His reading took him to faraway lands, and he imagined himself as a king or a knight or a dragon slayer.

“I never had many friends,” he recalled, “my friends were the characters in books I’d read.” Mitchell, or “Mitcheek,” as he is endearingly called by loved ones, came to the United States at the age of 4 with his family. When he first came he only spoke Russian, but he says that spending time in the bookstore helped him learn English. Interestingly enough, his time in the bookstore also helped him learn Russian better. Many of his friend to also came to the United States at a young age cannot read or write in Russian. “They can speak the language pretty well but cannot read it, which can be a real problem with older people,” he says. His mother taught him the Russian alphabet, and he would spend hours sitting in the aisles of the bookstore Reading in Russian. Eventually, he moved from Basic children’s books to complex novels. Mitchell attends James Madison High school, a 20-minute train ride away from his families’ book store on Brighton 4^th Street. In his advanced placement literature class, he is currently reading War and Peace. When he learned at this novel was originally published in Russian, he looked for it on the shelves of his bookstore, and began to tackle it. He said that, “It’s interesting simultaneously reading a book in both its original publisher language, my native language [Russian], and in English.”

An older couple walked into the store and greets Mitchell by name. The three of them engage in conversation in Russian, obviously being familiar with each other. When I asked him who they were, he said that they were old customers who watched him grow up. Every few weeks they stop by and purchase new books, both in Russian and English. After guiding the couple to new books they might enjoy and eventually completing their transaction, I asked Mitchell if he feels that working at the bookstore interferes with his schoolwork. “Honestly, yes I do,” he honestly told me, “I’m going to be a senior in the fall, and soon I’ll be leaving for college. I love my parents and I know I have to help them out, but I want to see what else is out there besides this bookstore.” Mitchell expressed dreams of becoming an English major, at a big state school as far away from Brooklyn as he could possibly get. He says that he plans on working as much as possible in the next 18 months before he leaves to help pay for college. The little dreamer in Mitcheek has grown into young man with goals. He no longer fantasizes about being the dragon-slayer, but knows that he has to work hard to reach his goal of going to college, and if that means long hours spent in the book store after school, so be it.