The group contained in the Untold Story in Anaheim was prepared for open mic evening to start final week, however there was no approach it will begin on time.
Every time proprietor Lizzette Barrios Gracián tried to strategy the rostrum, somebody pulled her away for a hug. A congrats. A suggestion. A thanks.
The bookstore opened final yr in an industrial a part of town so remoted that 911 dispatchers couldn’t discover it when Barrios Gracián known as a couple of medical emergency. Although it shortly earned a loyal following for specializing in BIPOC books and permitting activists to satisfy there with out having to purchase something, the situation wasn’t working, and Barrios Gracián was prepared to shut what had been a longtime dream.
Then she discovered a greater, if smaller, place in a strip mall close to downtown, inside strolling distance of her house. The Untold Story reopened a number of weeks in the past, and this was the primary open mic evening on the new spot.
“Oh my god, what a difference location makes,” Barrios Gracián advised me as individuals stored submitting in on July 25. “They’re coming to hang out, they’re coming to buy, they’re coming to organize, they’re coming from across the country.”
Among the many clients she talked to that day: Toby from Florida. Nick from Kentucky who lives in Utah. A bunch of teenage women on the town for a water polo match. Anton Diubenko of Ukraine, who was in Orange County to see a pal and advised me he visits bookstores world wide.
“This one’s really nice,” Diubenko stated. “If I was a local, I’d come here every week.”
Barrios Gracián lastly reached the rostrum. She was 20 minutes late. Nobody cared.
“Thank you muchachos!” the 52-year-old stated in a loud, heat tone that hinted at her day job as a historical past trainer at Gilbert Excessive in Anaheim. “Bienvenidos to our new location of the Untold Story, Chapter 2! Your job tonight is to support, clap and give lots of love.”
Lizzette Barrios Gracián, proprietor of the Untold Story bookstore, can be a historical past trainer at Gilbert Excessive Faculty in Anaheim.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Instances)
Over the following two hours, the viewers snapped their fingers, applauded, hooted in approval or nodded as audio system poured out their proverbial hearts in English, Spanish and Nahuatl. Native political blogger Vern Nelson tickled out on his electrical keyboard the Mexican youngsters’s tune “El Ratón Vaquero” as adults and youths alike sang and clapped alongside. Each time somebody went as much as carry out, Barrios Gracián sat of their seat, as a result of all of the others had been occupied.
“The greatest success of this bookstore,” she stated in closing, flashing a smile as shiny as her gunmetal grey hair, “is uniting all of you.”
Though the evening was formally over, nobody left. They needed to exult within the second.
Vivian Lee, who organizes board recreation get-togethers on the bookstore by way of her function as neighborhood engagement coordinator for the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Group Alliance, stated that “welcoming spaces” might be arduous to search out in her native metropolis.
“People like Liz are just so incredible,” stated Lee, 30. “She’s game for anything that helps community.”
Paola Gutierrez teaches month-to-month bilingual poetry courses on the Untold Story. “When I first asked if she could sell my book, she said not just ‘Yes’ but ‘We will promote you and help you,’” the 47-year-old stated. “How can I not say I’m free for whatever you need?”
She pointed at a large sofa and laughed. “Liz needs me to move this freakin’ thing again? Let’s do it!”
Barrios-Gracian, middle, introduces poets throughout her bookstore’s open mic evening final week.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Instances)
I visited Barrios Gracián the next day when issues had been chiller. The Untold Story’s design is bohemian Latinx. All of the fixtures and paintings are donated, together with bookshelves, huge mirrors and a bust of the Egyptian goddess Isis in addition to a reproduction of the Titanic above the used fiction part. Insulation peeks out from sagging ceiling tiles. A stand subsequent to the reward part affords free toiletries and canned and dried meals.
“We’re going through hard times,” Barrios Gracián stated as Argentine rock gods Soda Stereo performed calmly from audio system. “I can’t give a lot, but I can give.”
How did she suppose open mic evening went?
“It was very successful for our first time here,” she responded. “You never know if people will follow you when you move.”
A buyer walked in.
“Hi, welcome!” Barrios Gracián exclaimed, the primary of many occasions she would do that in our chat. “Don’t shy away, you don’t have to buy!”
Born in Guadalajara, Barrios Gracián got here to Anaheim together with her dad and mom within the Nineteen Eighties with out papers, finally legalizing by way of the 1986 amnesty. A bookworm from a younger age, she discovered her “safe space” as a teen and younger grownup in long-gone bookstores equivalent to E-book Baron in Anaheim (“I loved how disorganized it was”) and the bilingual Librería Martínez in Santa Ana.
When the latter closed in 2016, Barrios Gracián vowed to open a model of it when her daughters had been older. In 2021, she launched the Untold Story as an internet site and a pop-up, aiming to finally open a storefront in her hometown.
“Anaheim is nothing but breweries,” she stated. “That’s the teacher in me. There’s nothing cultural for our youth — they have to go to Santa Ana to find it, while [Anaheim] lets gentrification go crazy.”
Lease proved prohibitive at most areas. At others, potential landlords would supply a lease provided that the Untold Story dropped its books on important race principle, which she refused to do.
“Those are the untold stories,” Barrios Gracián stated. “Anaheim needs to hear them. Everyone needs to hear them.”
She greeted Benjamin Smith Jr. of Riverside, who had learn the earlier evening and was returning now along with his poetry books.
“I can sell them, but we should have an event just for you, because people like to meet the author of the book they might buy,” Barrios Gracián advised Smith. He beamed.
Hailey Sotelo, 15, a scholar at Savanna Excessive Faculty in Anaheim, reads her poetry through the Untold Story’s open mic evening.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Instances)
“Liz gives people chances,” Smith, 68, advised me. “I’m no one famous, but look at me here now.”
Barrios Gracián is maintaining her job at Gilbert Excessive, the place she additionally heads the continuation faculty’s teen father or mother help program. On the Untold Story, she needs to host extra creator signings and launch an oral historical past venture for college kids to file the tales of Anaheim’s Latino elders.
“We’re in a crucial moment where our stories must be told from the past,” she stated. “Ellos sobrevivieron, también nosotros [They survived, we can as well]. It brings hope.”
One factor I instructed she work on is the enterprise aspect. The books are ridiculously inexpensive — used copies of a J. Robert Oppenheimer biography and a guide concerning the rise of Nazism in L.A. earlier than World Struggle II set me again $11. Barrios Gracián’s coaching consisted of a free entrepreneur course by way of town of Anaheim, a video by the American Booksellers Assn., speaking to different bookstore house owners and Googling “how to open a bookstore.”
She laughed.
“I tell my students we learn by falling and then getting back up,” she stated. “If I can make money, it would be great, but that’s not the point here. Might sound crazy for business people, right?”
The numbers are fortunately going “in the right direction,” stated the Untold Story’s supervisor, Magda Borbon. Barrios Gracián was one in every of her favourite academics at Katella Excessive Faculty, “so now it’s time to pay it back” by working on the retailer, she stated.
Like me and too many different Anaheimers, Borbon moved to Santa Ana “because I didn’t see myself culturally in Anaheim. Now I do.”
Barrios Gracián excused herself to greet extra clients. I walked over to a desk the place a bunch of ladies had been portray guide covers as a part of their guide membership. It was everybody’s first time on the Untold Story.
“This is very much an extension of Liz,” stated Angela Stecher, who has labored with Barrios Gracián earlier than. “She’s been talking about doing something like this for years, and it’s wonderful to see her do it.”
“This is like something that you’d see in San Francisco,” added Maria Zacarias, who grew up in Anaheim and now lives in Santa Ana.
“You go to a bookstore, you feel like you can’t touch anything because everything is so neat,” stated Liliana Mora. She waved across the room as extra individuals streamed in. “Here, it feels like home.”
