We were lucky to catch up with Erica Tso Haidas recently and have shared our conversation below.
Erica, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with talking about how you serve the underserved, because in our view this is one of the most important things the small business community does for society – by serving those who the giant corporations ignore, small business helps create a more inclusive and just world for all of us.
Being a person of color on the Cape can often feel exhausting. It is not an ethnically diverse place, and we are constantly navigating spaces that don’t feel like they’re for us — even if the spaces are welcoming. I have many personal stories and stories from friends and colleagues that illustrate this constant struggle, ranging from well-intentioned comments with negative impacts to microaggressions to straight out racism. And these experiences build and build and build until you feel like you either have to leave or you need to create the safe space that is missing.
So I started Belonging Books.
Belonging Books aims to create and hold space for members of the BIPOC community. This joyful gathering space is for people who want to rest a little and to be in community with other people who understand what it feels like to be a person of color living on the Cape.
Erica, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Belonging Books is a community program provider and a pop-up bookstore that centers the voices and stories of people of color and other underrepresented communities on Cape Cod. It holds space for the members of these communities to gather in joy, celebration, safety and belonging.
I am first generation Chinese-Canadian, born and raised in Vancouver, BC. I started in a legal profession working in NYC at an international law firm and then a national bank. Throughout this career, I tried to balance corporate life with meaningful volunteer and pro bono work, but it was never enough.
When we moved to Cape Cod in 2015 for my partner’s venture, I did not anticipate how difficult the transition was going to be. In particular, being a non-majority person in this predominantly white peninsula impacted me deeply. I often felt very isolated and othered. As a mother to two young mixed-raced children, I started to seriously question whether this place was the right place for our family. I started taking pro bono immigration cases for unaccompanied minors and volunteering for racial equity organizations to focus my energy.
The idea for Belonging Books grew out of a need for people of color and other underrepresented people on the Cape to have a place of community here where our voices and stories are front and center, where we do not have to explain ourselves or make sure everyone else in the room is comfortable, where we can rest and feel safe to celebrate who we are. It felt natural for me to build this community around books and writing – a symbolic way to center our historically-excluded voices and stories.
At the end of 2022, Belonging Books, along with three other organizations focused on art, culture and equity, formed The Arts & Justice Collective. Through this collaboration, Belonging Books has been able to reach more people, organize joyful community gatherings, and empower and uplift our historically-excluded communities. Eventually, I would love to establish physical, collaborative community space.
Whether it’s a book club, writing circle, open mic night or even a bookselling event, I am most proud of being able to create and hold space for people of color on the Cape — to carve out a small sanctuary.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
In 2006, I started my career in securities law at a full-service law firm in Toronto and then moved to a large full-service law firm in New York City. After a few years of working 80 hour weeks and crying on the subway on my way to and from work, I moved in-house to a national bank. While work life balance was much better, my heart and soul were still very much unfulfilled.
When I was pregnant with my first child, my husband and his brother started a project on Cape Cod – opening a new restaurant. My husband grew up on the Cape and two generations of his family had been in the restaurant business. We welcomed our baby and picked up and moved to spend parental leave on the Cape to get the restaurant going, thinking we would return back to NYC 6 months later to our current lives. We were naive about that!
When the restaurant launched, we ended up making the decision to leave our attorney jobs in NYC and move to Cape Cod. I became a full-time caregiver and put aside my career while my husband focused on this new venture. While I was definitely ready to leave the corporate world, this change or pivot was by far one of the hardest adjustments in life at that point — I was a new mother in a new place with a new focus. I felt a deep loss of identity and a great sense of isolation.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
A lesson that I have had to unlearn is that perfectionism and full preparation is the only way forward. When I was launching Belonging Books (and now as I continue to grow Belonging Books), I often feel paralyzed or only focus on the “busy work” because of my deep-rooted fears — Fear of failure, fear of making mistakes, fear of conflict, fear of success, fear of rejection, fear of criticism…
There is no one backstory, but a lifelong pattern of self-doubt, self-rejection, and making myself small so that others feel secure or comfortable. Likely a familiar story to other women of color growing up in North America. What I am learning and navigating on a daily basis is that I cannot let fear hold me back. The first step is to identify the fear and then figure out how to move forward.
I always go back to a quote from Audre Lorde in these times of fear: “When I dare to be powerful—to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.belongingbookscapecod.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/belongingbookscapecod
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/belongingbookscapecod
- Other: Belonging Books is a founding member of The Arts & Justice Collective: www.theartsandjusticecollective.com https://instagram.com/thecollectivecapecod
Image Credits
Phases Creative Studios Myself