The gang contained in the Untold Story in Anaheim was prepared for open mic evening to start final week, however there was no method it could begin on time.
Every time proprietor Lizzette Barrios Gracián tried to method 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 few 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 placement 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 couple of weeks in the past, and this was the primary open mic evening on the new spot.
“Oh my god, what a distinction location makes,” Barrios Gracián advised me as folks stored submitting in on July 25. “They’re coming to hang around, they’re coming to purchase, they’re coming to prepare, they’re coming from throughout the nation.”
Among the many clients she talked to that day: Toby from Florida. Nick from Kentucky who lives in Utah. A gaggle of teenage ladies on the town for a water polo match. Anton Diubenko of Ukraine, who was in Orange County to see a good friend and advised me he visits bookstores around the globe.
“This one’s very nice,” Diubenko stated. “If I used to be an area, I’d come right here each week.”
Barrios Gracián lastly reached the rostrum. She was 20 minutes late. Nobody cared.
“Thanks 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 assist, clap and provides numerous love.”
Lizzette Barrios Gracián, proprietor of the Untold Story bookstore, can also be a historical past trainer at Gilbert Excessive College 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 kids’s tune “El Ratón Vaquero” as adults and teenagers 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 best success of this bookstore,” she stated in closing, flashing a smile as brilliant 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 sport get-togethers on the bookstore by means of her position as neighborhood engagement coordinator for the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Neighborhood Alliance, stated that “welcoming areas” could be laborious to search out in her native metropolis.
“Individuals like Liz are simply so unimaginable,” stated Lee, 30. “She’s sport for something that helps neighborhood.”
Paola Gutierrez teaches month-to-month bilingual poetry courses on the Untold Story. “After I first requested if she may promote my ebook, she stated not simply ‘Sure’ however ‘We are going to promote you and enable you,’” the 47-year-old stated. “How can I not say I’m free for no matter you want?”
She pointed at a large sofa and laughed. “Liz wants me to maneuver this freakin’ factor once more? 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 art work 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 present part affords free toiletries and canned and dried meals.
“We’re going by means of laborious occasions,” Barrios Gracián stated as Argentine rock gods Soda Stereo performed flippantly from audio system. “I can’t give rather a lot, however I can provide.”
How did she assume open mic evening went?
“It was very profitable for our first time right here,” she responded. “You by no means know if folks will comply with you while you transfer.”
A buyer walked in.
“Hello, welcome!” Barrios Gracián exclaimed, the primary of many occasions she would do that in our chat. “Don’t shrink back, you don’t have to purchase!”
Born in Guadalajara, Barrios Gracián got here to Anaheim together with her dad and mom within the Nineteen Eighties with out papers, ultimately legalizing by means of the 1986 amnesty. A bookworm from a younger age, she discovered her “protected house” as a teen and younger grownup in long-gone bookstores equivalent to Ebook Baron in Anaheim (“I cherished 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 a web site and a pop-up, aiming to ultimately open a storefront in her hometown.
“Anaheim is nothing however breweries,” she stated. “That’s the trainer in me. There’s nothing cultural for our youth — they need to go to Santa Ana to search out it, whereas [Anaheim] lets gentrification go loopy.”
Hire proved prohibitive at most areas. At others, potential landlords would supply a lease provided that the Untold Story dropped its books on essential race idea, which she refused to do.
“These are the untold tales,” Barrios Gracián stated. “Anaheim wants to listen to them. Everybody wants to listen to them.”
She greeted Benjamin Smith Jr. of Riverside, who had learn the earlier evening and was returning now together with his poetry books.
“I can promote them, however we should always have an occasion only for you, as a result of folks like to satisfy the creator of the ebook they may purchase,” Barrios Gracián advised Smith. He beamed.
Hailey Sotelo, 15, a scholar at Savanna Excessive College in Anaheim, reads her poetry through the Untold Story’s open mic evening.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Instances)
“Liz offers folks possibilities,” Smith, 68, advised me. “I’m nobody well-known, however have a look at me right here now.”
Barrios Gracián is protecting her job at Gilbert Excessive, the place she additionally heads the continuation college’s teen mother or father assist program. On the Untold Story, she needs to host extra creator signings and launch an oral historical past mission for college kids to file the tales of Anaheim’s Latino elders.
“We’re in a vital second the place our tales should be advised from the previous,” she stated. “Ellos sobrevivieron, también nosotros [They survived, we can as well]. It brings hope.”
One factor I advised she work on is the enterprise facet. The books are ridiculously inexpensive — used copies of a J. Robert Oppenheimer biography and a ebook in regards to the rise of Nazism in L.A. earlier than World Battle II set me again $11. Barrios Gracián’s coaching consisted of a free entrepreneur course by means of town of Anaheim, a video by the American Booksellers Assn., speaking to different bookstore homeowners and Googling “find out how to open a bookstore.”
She laughed.
“I inform my college students we be taught by falling after which getting again up,” she stated. “If I can make cash, it could be nice, however that’s not the purpose right here. May sound loopy for enterprise folks, proper?”
The numbers are fortunately going “in the precise course,” stated the Untold Story’s supervisor, Magda Borbon. Barrios Gracián was one in every of her favourite academics at Katella Excessive College, “so now it’s time to pay it again” by working on the retailer, she stated.
Like me and too many different Anaheimers, Borbon moved to Santa Ana “as a result of 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 gaggle of girls had been portray ebook covers as a part of their ebook membership. It was everybody’s first time on the Untold Story.
“That is very a lot an extension of Liz,” stated Angela Stecher, who has labored with Barrios Gracián earlier than. “She’s been speaking about doing one thing like this for years, and it’s great to see her do it.”
“That is like one thing that you just’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 are feeling like you’ll be able to’t contact something as a result of all the pieces is so neat,” stated Liliana Mora. She waved across the room as extra folks streamed in. “Right here, it looks like house.”
