Black woman-owned bookstores in LA offer spaces of resilience and representation

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Jazzi McGilbert, Nikki High and Asha Grant in Choi Auditorium at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA. Oct. 4, 2024. Marty Valdez/The Occidental

Associate Professor of Black Studies Yumi Pak, and Humanities for Just Communities (HJC) peer mentor R’Anna Donastorg (sophomore) hosted a panel on Black woman-owned bookstores in Choi Auditorium Oct. 4. The panel discussion featured three bookstore owners, including Jazzi McGilbert of Reparations Club, Nikki High of Octavia’s Bookshelf and Asha Grant of The Salt Eaters Bookshop.

According to Pak, the event’s vision was to foster an understanding of the role of bookstores in community building and social justice and highlight the nuanced contributions of Black authors. Pak said she wanted to organize an event that would align with her course’s theme and engage students in meaningful dialogue.

“I knew of these three bookstores — Octavia’s Bookshelf, the Salt Eater’s Bookshop and Reparations Club — as three Black women-owned small bookstores in LA,” Pak said. “I wanted to bring the three owners together so that they can be in conversation with one another and my peer mentor [and I] could ask them questions.”

According to Donastorg, the event was also driven by the necessity of diverse representation on campus.

“I think it would be good to have the representation on campus — to see Black women in entrepreneurial endeavors is going to be so impactful,” Donastorg said. “To be able to reach out and talk to them is going to be great.

Jazzi McGilbert, Nikki High and Asha Grant in Choi Auditorium at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA. Oct. 4, 2024. Marty Valdez/The Occidental

The event was run as a part of Pak’s Black Studies class, Black Women Write Social Justice, within the HJC curriculum. The panel began with an introduction by Pak, where she thanked the HJC program for its support, recognized Donastorg’s work in organizing the event and introduced the three panelists.

Additionally, Pak said that the transformational power of writers, such as Bernardine Evaristo, Octavia Butler, Ntozake Shange and more, has challenged the idea that the world people live in is the only one that is possible.

“They taught me, as Toni Morrison has said many times, that artists and writers are dangerous because they never stop asking two burning questions: ‘What if?’ and ‘Why?’” Pak said.

The conversation began with introductions from the panelists themselves including information about their bookstores. Reparations Club and The Salt Eater’s Bookshop are both located in South Central LA, while Octavia’s Bookshelf is located in Pasadena. All three owners said their bookstores are spaces that highlight and center Black writers.

According to High, Pasadena is known as a hotspot for writers and readers as the city is full of bookstores and libraries. However, High said that Pasadena’s deep history of segregation has left a lasting legacy on the city’s diversity, including the literary culture.

“[I visit] bookstores every time I travel, and I was always in search of stories that reflected my experiences or experiences that I wanted to learn about,” High said. “I wasn’t entirely exposed to that growing up in Pasadena. Those spaces just didn’t exist outside of a Black History Month table at the library.”

According to High, her bookstore was envisioned as a space to foster diversity in the literary sphere and speak to marginalized communities. High said the bookstore is also an homage to American science fiction writer Octavia Butler’s hometown roots in Pasadena.

“What better place to have a space like Octavia’s Bookshelf [than] in Pasadena?” High said. “We’re three blocks away from her middle school — I mean the story sort of writes itself.”

High said she discovered Octavia Butler — a MacArthur Fellowship-winning author known for “Parable of the Sower” and “Kindred” — at the age of 16, at a time when she didn’t feel connected to the science fiction genre due to its lack of representation of people of color. According to High, Octavia Butler shifted her perspective on science fiction as a transformational genre.

“As many of you know, she writes sci-fi and dystopian, but she does it in a way that layers really current issues of gender and class and race,” High said. “To this day, I’ve never read anything by a single human that touched me in the way her works have.”

Nikki High in Choi Auditorium at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA. Oct. 4, 2024. Marty Valdez/The Occidental

Grant said her hometown of Inglewood, where The Salt Eater’s Bookshop is located, has always been welcoming and loving. According to Grant, there’s a senior center near the bookshop which fosters an invaluable intergenerational exchange at the bookstore. Grant said the community aspect of her bookstore resembles a Black version of “Mr. Rogers’s Neighborhood”.

“We’re right next to Sip and Sonder [and] Hilltop, which are two Black coffee shops,” Grant said. “We’re a very tight-knit community. It’s very borrow-a-cup-of-sugar-from-your-neighbor, we’re always using each other’s chairs and fans if something goes wrong.”

Asha Grant in Choi Auditorium at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA. Oct. 4, 2024. Marty Valdez/The Occidental

High said she hopes her bookstore can serve as a space to share stories that push us to think differently by widening our imagination.

“I’m often asked if I write, and I’m not a writer,” High said. “I’m just someone who is so deeply grateful that there are storytellers who believe in their craft and who gift us stories that stretch my imagination and allow me to escape and learn.”

Contact Julian Villa at jvilla@oxy.edu

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