The gang contained in the Untold Story in Anaheim was prepared for open mic night time to start final week, however there was no approach it could 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 the town so remoted that 911 dispatchers couldn’t discover it when Barrios Gracián referred to as a couple of medical emergency. Although it rapidly 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 number of weeks in the past, and this was the primary open mic night time on the new spot.
“Oh my god, what a distinction location makes,” Barrios Gracián instructed me as folks saved 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 women on the town for a water polo match. Anton Diubenko of Ukraine, who was in Orange County to see a buddy and instructed me he visits bookstores around the globe.
“This one’s very nice,” Diubenko mentioned. “If I used to be a neighborhood, 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 mentioned 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 help, clap and provides numerous love.”
Lizzette Barrios Gracián, proprietor of the Untold Story bookstore, can also be a historical past trainer at Gilbert Excessive Faculty in Anaheim.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Instances)
Over the subsequent 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 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 mentioned in closing, flashing a smile as vivid as her gunmetal grey hair, “is uniting all of you.”
Though the night time was formally over, nobody left. They needed to exult within the second.
Vivian Lee, who organizes board recreation get-togethers on the bookstore by means of her function as neighborhood engagement coordinator for the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Group Alliance, mentioned that “welcoming areas” might be laborious to seek out in her native metropolis.
“Individuals like Liz are simply so unbelievable,” mentioned Lee, 30. “She’s recreation for something that helps neighborhood.”
Paola Gutierrez teaches month-to-month bilingual poetry lessons on the Untold Story. “Once I first requested if she might promote my e book, she mentioned not simply ‘Sure’ however ‘We are going to promote you and make it easier to,’” the 47-year-old mentioned. “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, heart, introduces poets throughout her bookstore’s open mic night time 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 duplicate of the Titanic above the used fiction part. Insulation peeks out from sagging ceiling tiles. A stand subsequent to the present part presents free toiletries and canned and dried meals.
“We’re going by means of laborious instances,” Barrios Gracián mentioned as Argentine rock gods Soda Stereo performed flippantly from audio system. “I can’t give so much, however I can provide.”
How did she suppose open mic night time went?
“It was very profitable for our first time right here,” she responded. “You by no means know if folks will comply with you once you transfer.”
A buyer walked in.
“Hello, welcome!” Barrios Gracián exclaimed, the primary of many instances 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 along with her mother and father within the Nineteen Eighties with out papers, finally 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 E book 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 finally open a storefront in her hometown.
“Anaheim is nothing however breweries,” she mentioned. “That’s the trainer in me. There’s nothing cultural for our youth — they must go to Santa Ana to seek 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 crucial race principle, which she refused to do.
“These are the untold tales,” Barrios Gracián mentioned. “Anaheim wants to listen to them. Everybody wants to listen to them.”
She greeted Benjamin Smith Jr. of Riverside, who had learn the earlier night time and was returning now together with his poetry books.
“I can promote them, however we must always have an occasion only for you, as a result of folks like to satisfy the creator of the e book they may purchase,” Barrios Gracián instructed Smith. He beamed.
Hailey Sotelo, 15, a scholar at Savanna Excessive Faculty in Anaheim, reads her poetry through the Untold Story’s open mic night time.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Instances)
“Liz provides folks possibilities,” Smith, 68, instructed me. “I’m nobody well-known, however take a look at me right here now.”
Barrios Gracián is preserving her job at Gilbert Excessive, the place she additionally heads the continuation college’s teen guardian help program. On the Untold Story, she needs to host extra creator signings and launch an oral historical past challenge for college kids to file the tales of Anaheim’s Latino elders.
“We’re in an important second the place our tales should be instructed from the previous,” she mentioned. “Ellos sobrevivieron, también nosotros [They survived, we can as well]. It brings hope.”
One factor I instructed she work on is the enterprise facet. The books are ridiculously inexpensive — used copies of a J. Robert Oppenheimer biography and a e book in regards to the rise of Nazism in L.A. earlier than World Conflict II set me again $11. Barrios Gracián’s coaching consisted of a free entrepreneur course by means of the town of Anaheim, a video by the American Booksellers Assn., speaking to different bookstore house owners and Googling “the best way to open a bookstore.”
She laughed.
“I inform my college students we be taught by falling after which getting again up,” she mentioned. “If I can earn a living, 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 path,” mentioned the Untold Story’s supervisor, Magda Borbon. Barrios Gracián was one among her favourite academics at Katella Excessive Faculty, “so now it’s time to pay it again” by working on the retailer, she mentioned.
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 e book covers as a part of their e book membership. It was everybody’s first time on the Untold Story.
“That is very a lot an extension of Liz,” mentioned 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 fantastic 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 every little thing is so neat,” mentioned Liliana Mora. She waved across the room as extra folks streamed in. “Right here, it looks like house.”
