April 3, 2024 • 45 mins
In this episode, I am joined by Ymani Wince, owner and proprietor of the Noir Book Shop in St. Louis, MO. The Noir Book Shop is bookstore dedicated to the Black experience designed to build community through its educational programming and product offerings. The shop has also recently installed a Inchy Bookworm vending machine to help sustain it's three pillars: education, inspiration, and community. https://www.noirbookshop.com/
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Episode Transcript
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Are you ready to embark on an adventure through the world of words?
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Join us on the Reading Revolution and let's explore the exciting world of literacy together.
Hi and welcome back to the Reading Revolution powered by BookVending.com.
I'm your host, Josh Gregory.
We're heading down to St. Louis, Missouri for this episode to speak with Imani Witz,
the owner and creator of Noir Bookshop, a bookstore dedicated to the black experience
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selling both new and used books by black authors and people of color.
It's a space designed to build community through educational programs and product offerings
and a great program called the Books Are Good Experiment.
We're going to jump into that right away.
Imani, thanks for joining us on the Reading Revolution.
Joshua, thank you so much for having me.
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I really appreciate it.
So just to start things out, can you talk a little bit about this creation of your bookshop?
Where did the idea come from?
Yeah, so I like to say that so many ideas for Noir didn't come from just one specific
place.
They kind of came from different experiences.
It all happened at once, kind of like a big bang, I would say.
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My background, I'm from St. Louis.
I grew up born and raised here.
I'm a product of the Ferguson Florissant School District.
I went to University of Missouri, Columbia, studied journalism.
And when I was in college, I had an internship every summer at our city's daily paper, the
St. Louis Post Dispatch.
And I was at the newsroom, I was in the newsroom August 9th, 2014.
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And that was the day that Michael Brown was murdered here in St. Louis.
And so I was really seeing how a news station or news organization worked with that sort
of level of breaking news.
And that was unlike anything that I'd ever seen in St. Louis in my lifetime.
At the time I was 20 years old, I believe I was about to turn 21.
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And it was incredible to see how journalists were moving and how for the first time, my
own identity was a part of a story, was a part of the overall message of what was happening.
And it really made me rethink where I want it to be professionally, if I want it to be
a sort of breaking news reporter, if I want it to be a journalist at all.
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And so I experienced seeing what was happening on the ground, not only just with people in
Ferguson and protesting and the unrest, but also seeing what was happening in the newsroom
and how the stories were being formed and how not all newsrooms are unbiased.
And so that really informed a lot of how I saw myself as not only a Black woman, but
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how I saw myself as a journalist and member of my own community.
Because again, I felt like I was now part of the story.
And so there was just a lot of things that have happened in St. Louis between 2014 and
now.
And so whenever these sorts of civil rights moments happened, whether it was Ferguson
or whether it was protesting during 2020 for George Floyd or just other things that were
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happening in the St. Louis that have to do with civil rights and social justice, I would
think about if I had a bookstore at that time, what would it have done in the community?
How would it have existed?
And then historically with Black bookstores in general, they've always been third spaces.
They've always been places in the community where Black people could congregate and be
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amongst themselves and learn and be educated.
Not only that, but just the importance of reading in the Black community from the United
States having laws that said the enslaved were not allowed to learn how to read to once
Juneteenth happened and the freeing of the enslaved in 1865 and some years thereafter.
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That was the main thing on everyone's agenda was to learn how to read.
Frederick Douglass talked a lot about reading.
Madam C.J. Walker was born two years post slavery and her parents instilled in her to
learn how to read.
And so it was that kind of history that I thought about and just thinking about the
Black liberation movement during the 1960s and 70s where the sort of work, the sort of
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bookstore that I have and promote would have definitely landed me on the FBI watch list.
And so I think about those sorts of historical moments and facts to try to keep in perspective
why my bookstore is needed, even when the highs and lows of an entrepreneur are real.
I keep that in the forefront.
And so I think about those reasons.
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I think about where I was during Ferguson and my time in college.
And then I just thought about even as a hungry reader myself, I was not reading Black literature
until my final year of college.
And so reading is a privilege.
It's always been something that is a privilege.
But I wanted more people that look like me to have access to reading, to not only read
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Black books, but to have a place where they could go that felt community oriented, that
functioned as a third space, but also supported the community in which it resides.
And so I always felt that bookstores should support the communities where they are and
that the idea of a bookstore shouldn't start and end with the retail or the sale of a book.
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And so even though I didn't go into journalism full time, I was still writing for different
publications across the country once I finished school.
And I was writing also in St. Louis community interest stories.
I had been contributing to indie music in the St. Louis scene.
I had been writing community interest stories about people in my community.
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And so I was always on Cherokee Street, which is in the creative community of Missouri in
St. Louis.
And so it's known as that.
And so there's a lot of different types of people on Cherokee Street.
It's a huge arts district.
It's a shopping district here in St. Louis.
And it's very eclectic.
And you see so many walks of life and so many ethnicities and nationalities on Cherokee
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Street.
But also a lot of milestones for me happened in my 20s on Cherokee Street that really kind
of cemented me in the community.
And so when I decided I wanted to open a store, I imagined it being on Cherokee Street.
And I imagined it being this warm, wonderful place where people could not only learn about
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Black history, but they could buy books, they could host events, there could be story times.
And I really saw that the market and the opportunity for that, not only in St. Louis city, but
just in general, was wide open.
What a unique way to give back to the community and bolster that idea of how important reading
it is.
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We see statistics all the time from all walks of life that everyone seems to be struggling,
especially at the younger years, to get kids to read.
And it's amazing that you're being able to pull in a whole bunch of different things.
But at the end of the day, showing that importance.
And I just can't get my arms around it.
We all know how important it is, yet we still struggle to do it as a society.
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Yeah, I agree.
And I think one of the things that has worked for me is I was 27 turning 28 when I opened
my store, when I really began conceptualizing the Noir Bookshop, because it didn't start
as a full on brick and mortar idea.
It started in 2020 as I wanted people to be able to pick up books.
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So the thing that I loved in quarantine was the curbside pickup.
And so their local independent bookstores in my neighborhood, in my community, where
I could look and see if they had a certain book online.
And if it was in stock, I was picking it up in two hours from their stoop with my mask
on.
And so the being cooped up from March till May, it was a really great opportunity just
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to get outside and have fresh air and walk around, see the birds, see the trees and then
pick up books.
And so I had been on Instagram and I was seeing a lot of vintage covers of black literature
and I was really intrigued by that seeing books like Song of Solomon or Tar Baby by
Toni Morrison and how the covers changed throughout the years with different editions and different
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printings.
But then also just seeing all the other black books that had these amazing books that I
don't see anymore that are not currently being printed.
And so I was interested not only in reading the stories, but kind of just collecting the
books themselves.
And so I would buy them on eBay.
I would buy them from other vintage booksellers.
I would scour the internet for these copies.
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And once I got them, I started posting them to an Instagram account called Little Noir
Library.
And so that's how it started.
And so I never really set out to be a bookseller.
It was more like I was selling information and telling people about these books and showing
them the page with the copyright information and what year it was printed and what edition
and why that matters and what happened that year when this book was printed.
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And so it really my skill has always been being a communicator and telling people information
and talking about books in a sort of passionate way.
And I was selling these books for next to nothing, maybe $5 or less, or if it was something
that was really cool, maybe it was $12.
But really, I just wanted people to know about what I was doing and to know about books and
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to create an online community because all we had at that time was Zoom and curbside
pickup.
And everything that I got, people wanted it.
They bought it.
They would pick it up from my stoop.
And things returned to normal a little bit or normal as we knew them during 2021 to 2022.
And I went back to work and I was working in tech at the time.
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And by December of 2021, the idea just kind of came around a little bit more again.
And I was on YouTube and I was seeing Black women my age who had opened bookstores and
it just kind of opened this portal into the bookselling world and me discovering so many
different Black bookstores around the country.
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But I say so many, but Black booksellers only make up about 6% or less of the bookselling
industry.
So at the time that I opened my store, I think maybe there was 125 stores at the time.
But now there's I think close to 150 or just a little bit over it of Black-owned bookstores.
So it really just shows you out of the 2500 plus independent bookstores in the US, not
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even 10% of them are Black-owned.
So that was another big thing, just seeing all of that and kind of putting these ideas
together and I'm a person of community who's created by community and I shop small, I shop
local.
I told you Cherokee Street has been a place that was very important to me.
So at one point in time, all of my disposable income was going to different businesses
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on Cherokee Street, whether I was shopping at a Black-owned craft beer store or shopping
at my friend's antique store or shopping for furniture, all of that was contained on Cherokee
Street.
So I really wanted to create a place where small business owners or people who had products
were Black and Brown could have their products in a storefront, but also you had access to
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books, you had access to community events, you had access to information.
And so that's really been the driving force of it, even though the store is based on three
pillars, those three pillars all mean something else, all mean something important to the
store and they all have events and books and things that follow those pillars and just
the way that I run the store.
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But really I set out to put books in the community and that's still true today.
I look at a lot of different industries, a lot of different neighborhoods where at one
point in time they were really strong, close knit communities that you're describing right
now.
We kind of got away from that, but there seems to be a resurgence of building those neighborhoods
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back and with the personality and the passion that you're bringing, what was it like when
you first started?
How did the community receive, not only that there's a bookshop in town dedicated to the
Black experience, but it's from someone who is from here trying to build that community?
That's an interesting question because when I look at my journey with the bookstore and
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even when I look at myself when people ask, how does it feel?
I don't really see myself as being up here or above where I am or even just I see it
as amazing, but I don't internalize it and have an ego about it.
But I honestly didn't expect for people to or for my community to be so welcome and open
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to the idea as quickly as it happened.
Like I said, I announced in December of 2021 that I wanted to open a bookstore and so I
put that online because I had already been coming up with a business plan.
I was getting things cemented with my state, getting a business ID, getting a business
license, trying to figure out all of those steps of establishing an LLC and what did
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that look like?
And just researching as I was doing it, I was learning about bookselling as I was building
a bookshop.
And so really my thoughts were to be on the campaign trail for six to eight months, which
would include pop-ups around the city so that people could understand me as a bookseller
versus me as a journalist in the city.
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And so I wanted to get that community buy-in and that credibility.
And one of the biggest ways I did that was by having a pop-up at an already established
store here in St. Louis and a lot of people came to that event.
And this store owner, he allowed me to use his store for the weekend and turn it into
a bookstore.
And so it was held in February and I called the event For the Lovers.
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So Toni Morrison's birthday is in February, but also we celebrate Black History Month
in February as well as Valentine's Day.
And so I created this sort of themed event of books all about love, no matter what type
of love that it was about.
And I had pound cake, I had merchandise, I had candles, I had all of these elements
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of a store just as a pop-up for two days.
And it was wildly successful.
I was so busy, I didn't really get to enjoy the pop-up because I was constantly ringing
people up for their books, for their hoodies, for all sorts of things.
And people were donating to my cause and it was just unreal to see that people were excited
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about a bookstore.
And not only that, it had snowed in St. Louis that week.
And so I was nervous that people weren't going to come out because of how cold it was and
there was ice on the ground and all of that.
And the shop owner, Chris, he made sure there was salt on the sidewalk, made sure that things
were shoveled and just people showed up.
And so my store, I tell people I never had to really go look for a physical space for
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the bookstore because the space presented itself to me.
And so with the revenue that I had from that one event, I signed a lease for a store three
days later.
That's amazing.
And you must have had, or maybe not, I guess I should rephrase that question.
When you're doing this, did you have a team of people that were helping you or just a
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couple of folks or were you really all on your own when you were establishing yourself
in that space?
Yeah.
So I'm a Leo and I have a very get it done sort of attitude.
I don't like waiting on other people.
I don't like too many people's hands in the pot.
So from then till now, it has always been a one woman show.
I'm very close to my first hires this year and very close to establishing a team of volunteers
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for all the nonprofit work that I'm doing.
But it has been a one woman show, which has worked for me and against me at times.
But at that point, I had sort of grassroots people that were helping me fund it, who I
had, I will always tell people I had a coworker who we didn't talk that often.
We just did our jobs and worked, you know, collaboratively on teams.
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But she was the first donation that I got for my entire venture.
And she gave me a thousand dollars.
And that blew my mind that a colleague who I didn't know that well would give me a thousand
dollars.
And I'll never forget that she said, when I was starting my business, this helped me
a lot.
So I wanted to pay it forward.
And so when I get to the space where I can just give out money as a bookshop, I definitely
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want to establish that sort of, I guess, scholarship of a thousand dollars to give away to a beginning
business owner as a nod to Lisa for giving me that money.
And so it's never been anybody kind of helping me with the book process or helping me lug
things around the city.
I have had friends who have seen me in places who will help me pack up my car when it's
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time to go.
But the day to day, the creation of it has been me.
When you mentioned that there's a number of different events going on, and obviously these
other pillars that I want to get into as we continue the conversation, they all seem to
work hand in hand.
How did you get that kind of synergy for those three things to work?
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You know, when I'm going to open a bookstore, you think, oh, that's all we're going to do
here.
But that's not what's happening in the walls of your store.
Yeah.
So all of my life experiences I credit to helping me open my bookstore.
So when I was creating the store, I was working for an ad tech firm called Advocato here in
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St. Louis.
And they are, I will say Google's answer to the cookie.
And so that kind of tells you a little bit about what they do.
But it was a scrappy startup that was really doing well.
And I really enjoyed our co-CEOs and CFO.
And the thing that I loved about the company is that it was founded on three pillars and
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those three pillars helped move everything through the company.
And so I worked in marketing.
And so the messaging fit one of those pillars online where you had to use these colors if
you're talking about X, Y, and Z on LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook.
And the pillars really kept everything in order.
And when you think about our government, our government has three branches, which offers
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those checks and balances.
And so those three pillars in the company offer checks and balances.
And it was a nod to always understanding why you did a certain thing at the company, whether
it was a technical skill or how you treated your colleagues or how you were treated as
an employee.
All of those things went hand in hand.
And I was really inspired by that.
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And since I was so close to the team and so close to making the biscuits, I was able to
see in real time how that worked and how that kept everything running.
And so when I started the store, I felt like I should follow that sort of model, that sort
of template of what are my pillars?
What is really going to keep this bookstore going?
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What is going to give it meaning?
And even as the bookstore has been a living and sort of breathing idea, the business plan
that I started with is not the business plan I'm functioning on today.
And the three pillars have kind of kept that in check for me.
And there's some there's been times where I'm looking at how I want to do an event or
I'm looking at what I want to do in the next few months or where I want my business to
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go as an end game.
And those three pillars will reveal something to me that I didn't think about before based
on me having my store open, me having day to day experience in the store, me learning
new things.
The pillars in themselves are the same, but the way I look at it has changed.
And I love inspiration.
It's such a wonderful word and being able to translate to other folks that inspiration
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can come from books, whether you're a young child just learning how to read or an adult
who's well read, that inspiration exists in these books that folks can buy.
And then honestly down the road, probably even share on their own.
Yeah.
And when I say that there are aspects of the store that correlate with each pillar, you're
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speaking to that directly.
Now books will fit in each one of those content buckets for education, inspiration and community,
but it's also being able to see what you want to be.
And so whether that's the characters of children's books or the books in the store that are offered,
the topics of the books that are offered in the store, that it also includes authors that
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visit the store.
It includes the entrepreneurs who I allow to sell products in the store, to have pop-ups
in the store.
That's inspiration or even something that's worked for me as I'm young, I'm relatively
young.
And so I feel like just that in itself from the way that I present myself, the way I dress,
the way that I talk, the way that I just kind of show up as myself.
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I consider myself like a black Ms. Frizzle or I'm a big kid that still loves to wear
sneakers with dresses and all of that.
I feel like that makes it accessible to people that I don't come across as a stuffy, I
don't come across as an academic just because I love books.
And so I think just me being myself and me being a black woman that was, a black woman
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and that has been able to stand up and say, I like these things, here are all of my interests,
come to my store that's supposed to feel like my grandma's house.
But also I'm not afraid to take a chance even if the whole thing doesn't work.
I told myself that I would commit at least one year of my life to try to bring this idea
forward because the pandemic had happened and I felt like, well, why wait?
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Why wait on all these things to happen?
And there were some figures in Hollywood that had passed away during that time that I was
devastated by.
And I felt like, well, why wait to get these things accomplished?
And so I think that that serves as an inspiration within itself and just me telling people,
listen, you don't have to like books just as much as I do, but you can find something
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that you can grasp onto and hold onto that will help you live a life of your very best
possibilities.
And I like the approach that you have with being able to promote the idea of reading
from a lot of different genres and not just getting stuck in one thing.
I know a lot of us have that experience in high school and college where these are the
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books you're going to read and maybe not necessarily keeping a closed mind to just these books,
being open to all different authors, all different backgrounds.
How important that is to really build on our foundation of being able to interact in society
in a meaningful way.
I think it speaks to the idea that we are all different, you know, and I think it's
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easy to, if you're not from a certain racial group, to kind of lump people in together.
But if there's anything that I've learned about this experience, even from being a black
person myself, is that we are all different.
And I've had African American people, black people come into my store who said, you know,
this is the first time I'm just now getting into reading black authors.
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What would you recommend?
Or I've met plenty of black people who have come into the store and let me know they were
adopted by a Catholic family or they were adopted by a white family and a German family,
and they were the only black person in their high school or they were the only black kids
in their town.
And so they're looking for connection and looking for context of, you know, learning
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about where they come from and who they are.
And so I think just offering a space like mine where I try to make the books accessible
and make them attractive to people to want to read without feeling like you have to have
gone to college, you had to have had experiences like Imani.
No, books are good and books are for everyone.
And I think just being in the community and being able to experience that and being able
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to touch it with my hands, literally, I have learned and I've seen that where people are
economically has nothing to do with their interests and what's going on in their head.
I've given away books in the poorest of neighborhoods and went back to my store without a single
book.
So people are attracted to books.
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People are interested in them.
And I just really wanted to bridge that gap and to show that no matter who you are or
where you come from, information is a human right.
Now you're incorporating an Inchi the Bookworm book vending machine in, you know, Noir Bookshop.
Can you tell me how the idea for that came around and what was the idea behind it just
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to say, you know, we're going to incorporate this unique machine into our community as
yet another way to promote the idea of literacy and how important it is?
Yeah, so I stumbled upon the company by chance.
I had had the idea of a vending machine maybe about four or five months into owning my store
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and running my store.
But then after experiencing all four seasons in my brick and mortar space, I was able to
see what times of the year were busier than others, when the foot traffic was good, etc.
But then also, I was noticing that children weren't actually coming to the store that
often if they were with a parent, sure, but I wasn't really seeing kids walking around
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in the neighborhood.
And so I really thought about that.
And I was thinking, how can I get books where they are, where kids are, where other people
are?
And so initially, I thought, okay, I can put a vending machine in the airport, I can put
a vending machine in the mall.
And it started as a, okay, I can make revenue in these ways as well.
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But then on the back end outside of the store, I had started working at a local charter school.
And so I was building libraries for K through four in middle school.
But I was also, excuse me, teaching reading intervention, I was working with kids one
on one and doing book groups and teaching kids how to read.
And it really opened my eyes up in person to the disparities of reading proficiency
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of black children and children in my city.
And so that really got me thinking, okay, how do we bridge this gap now?
And so in between that time, so all these things are happening concurrently.
And in between that time, I had applied for a grant here in St. Louis.
And I told them that I wanted to have a network of vending machines in different places throughout
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the city where I could give out free books.
And so I would need the funding for that.
And my proposal was accepted and the Noir Bookshop did receive a grant.
And so since then, I've been working on everything to get a vending machine to kids.
And so I wanted the machine to exist in a high traffic high impact area where I knew
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kids will interact with it and that there would be adults to kind of help guide that
process.
And I know that typically, you see these vending machines in either schools or you see them
in libraries.
And they're typically, you know, run by a group of people and they're run by an organization.
But this was just me.
And so I started really researching more about the vending machine.
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And I'd seen, I forget the lady's first name, but her name online is Storybook Maze.
And I was seeing the work that she did in Baltimore.
And I was like, that's really cool.
And I just started learning more about the machine itself.
And I realized that it could work and it could work with the grant.
And so I chose the Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Club.
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It's in North St. Louis.
And that is an organization that is just as personal to me as it is to a lot of people
in St. Louis.
If you look at several athletes that have come from football and basketball, they spent
a lot of time at that specific location.
And it's housed in North St. Louis, which is a hard socially economically hit area.
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But that location for the Boys and Girls Club has historically produced amazing athletes
and has produced amazing people that have gone on to college and have really lived out
their dreams because they had somewhere safe to go and people that cared for them and people
that put in that development with children.
And they have really upgraded their facilities since I was a kid.
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And so that was the first place that I knew I wanted it to go.
And they service, I believe they said they service over 200 kids a day, Monday through
Friday.
And so I just know that the machine would get the sort of attention and the sort of
use that I wanted it to.
But it also served two purposes.
St. Louis City.
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St. Louis City is rough for Black children.
It's rough just socioeconomically, but also just physically.
And so one of the reasons why I stopped putting books into little libraries was because a
lot of the little libraries on in the harder hit part of the city, harder hit parts of
the city, they physically need help.
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And so I didn't want to collect all these books from the community and then go put them
out into the elements or put them in places where they wouldn't or they would be damaged.
But also little libraries work when people have something to put back into them.
And like I said, a lot of people do not have the disposable income of just buying books
to give them away again, or even just having book ownership as a whole.
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And so my goal was to hit all of these things to help with reading proficiency, to build
one's own personal library, and also to just put books in the community.
And so if I know that this machine is going to be safe inside Herbert Hoover Boys and
Girls Club, there's kids coming through every single day, even on the weekends, I know that
they're going to love this free token machine that has books in it.
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And just imagine, you know, I was a kid who loved to read.
And when I discovered the concept of a series, that was amazing for me.
So imagine you have a series that you love and you're reading the first book in the Hunger
Games series, and then you see all the other ones are right there and all you have to do
is come back and get it when you're ready.
That makes me so excited because I know that there is a kid, there are many kids out there
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that would just love to be able to go and just get books and have them.
You know, libraries are wonderful.
They're institutions that I think more people nowadays don't use as much with the advent
of being able to download something to your phone or your tablet, laptop, what may come
in or be something that they're just more interested in.
(30:19):
But what you were just talking about is kind of the really fun part of a book store or
a book vending machine.
It's the magic of the ownership that this is mine now.
I don't have to take this back.
This is my copy.
There really is some magic in that.
Yeah, I agree.
And as you say that, I think about all of the books that I had growing up.
(30:43):
One of the things that I learned was that in St. Louis City specifically, the statistic
is that, you know, 97 to 99 percent of households will never interact with 100 books over a
20 year period.
And I can't even I'm sure I've interacted with thousands of books in my 30 years, but
that was an alarming statistic.
And for for the time that I was working at a school and I was doing library duties, kids
(31:08):
would come in and they would say, does my mom have to pay for this or I don't have any
money for these books?
They didn't understand the concept of borrowing.
And so at the end of the school year, the school allowed me to just give away brand
new books that were donated.
And the look on their faces when they were able to take home a bag of books for the summer
or when their parents came to pick them up and they were like, oh, are these free?
(31:30):
Everyone was excited about it.
And that's that's where I started coining the term books are good.
That has been the campaign for the machine that has been what's etched on the side of
my glasses.
And I put it everywhere because in a time like now, especially in a state like Missouri,
where books are being banned and you have people literally burning physical copies of
books and kids can't read, how do you deny that books are good?
(31:55):
Books are good.
And so that's that's really been the forefront of my campaign and just the noir bookshop
and the vending machine in general.
But the book ownership is something that I really wanted to hone in on, because again,
I believe that information is a human right.
And this was not about me selling books.
It was about me trying to bridge the gap and trying to move the ball down the field, so
(32:18):
to speak, to help black children in St. Louis become proficient in reading and grow a love
of books.
It amazes me that we know there is a literacy problem in this country.
Yet there is a group of folks who want to take away even more material that might even
boost those scores in literacy and get kids, adults, whoever it may be, more interested
(32:42):
in reading.
I just read an article from New Mexico that the state is looking at a proposal.
I know it's been introduced into their into their house to ban the banning of books to
stop this kind of, you know, we need to ban these books.
Where does this mentality come from in your estimation that, you know, I don't like it,
(33:05):
therefore it's no good?
I think that a lot of content in books, especially when you're thinking of books like 1619 Project
or The Bluest Eye or any sort of book where BIPOC individuals are telling you their experiences,
that kind of hits at something that's close to home for a lot of people in the U.S.
(33:26):
And I believe that it's that that idea of we don't want to talk about that or, oh, that
was so long ago or why can't we just get over it?
And it's well, these things didn't happen that so long ago.
My grandfather turned 81 in 2023 and he lived less than 100 miles away from where Emmett
Till was murdered and they were the same age that summer.
(33:49):
So it doesn't it wasn't that long ago.
And my goal, of course, has not been to necessarily just push traumatic stories about Black people.
It has been to uplift stories that Black people have told.
And so I think the issue that lobbyists against books or people who are so strongly against
(34:10):
books, certain books, certain book topics or certain book titles, I really think that
the problem is that they don't want to confront the truth.
They don't want to analyze that.
They don't want to start connecting the connecting the dots and then say, well, wait a minute.
Great great grandfather fought in the Civil War and he lived in this town that was established.
Whoa.
(34:31):
You know, they don't want to confront those sorts of things.
And I don't think that giving children the access to certain books about race, about
sex, about gender, about whatever topic that people think is just no good is going to affect
you personally.
It doesn't just like I can't expect Cardi B to raise my kid based on a based on a song
(34:52):
she puts on the radio.
It's about you as a parent or you as an individual, you as an educator offering the access and
also being responsible enough to help your kid know the difference between this and that
or to teach them right from wrong.
And so honestly, I think it's more so people's personal issues that they can't come to terms
(35:13):
with.
But I don't believe that one individual or a handful of people should be able to decide
what my future kids can read and what they have access to.
So there is an importance when talking about the promotion of reading and literacy to not
only focus on the act of reading and how to read, but also the issues and the other things
(35:33):
that are surrounding it.
It all needs to be part of the discussion if we're to see this issue with illiteracy
start to dwindle and have more people just being literate enough to get through life.
Yeah, I think often about my own family.
My grandfather had to stop going to school when he was in the fourth grade.
(35:54):
So he didn't have the sort of same opportunities as me and as his children.
And so to have a grandfather to have living grandparents and one of them, their options
was to either be a sharecropper or figure something else out and leave Mississippi.
And now his granddaughter owns a bookstore.
I think that that is, I think that's a big deal.
(36:15):
And it also serves twofold to show that we're not that far away from what my grandfather's
childhood was like, but also promoting that you can get further than the past generations.
But also those past generations allowed me to get further.
If my grandfather had not left Mississippi and come to St. Louis and met my grandma,
(36:36):
there'd be no my dad, there'd be no me.
And so I really am thankful for the history and for all of that.
But also it serves as a driving force for me to remember where I came from, to remember
sacrifices of African-Americans in this country.
And for me, it just really solidifies that literacy is important.
Frederick Douglass has a quote that is something to the effect of, you learn to read and you
(37:00):
will forever be free.
And when he said that, the context of the day was he was a former slave.
He did live in the United States post slavery and during it.
And I keep bringing that up because we don't talk enough about how important it is that
the former enslaved learn to read and why they were not allowed to learn to read when
(37:23):
they were enslaved and how it's so important that third graders become proficient in reading
at third grade.
That the state of Missouri is looking at test scores to decide how large to build gym sales.
And they're looking at that data and all of these things are connected.
And so when I tell kids, you don't have to love books just as much as me, but you need
(37:47):
to find something that you are interested in.
And you need to learn how to read and you need to know your letters.
You need to have phonemic awareness.
You need to be in school because if you're in school, we're going to break that school
to prison pipeline.
We're going to break those disparities in the black community, or at least like I say,
move the ball down the field.
(38:08):
When you're in school, you have something to hold onto.
You're going to do that homework because you want to go to school for football.
So the literacy, it's not just learning how to read and enjoying books.
It's setting yourself up to be forever free.
And building on that sense of community, another one of the pillars that we've touched on a
little bit here, how can people get involved with Noir Bookshop and the reading experiment
(38:34):
that you've got with the Inchy the Bookworm book vending machine?
So right now there are three main ways to get involved with that.
On my website, on our homepage, you can either donate directly to the machine itself, which
will be a tax deductible donation through our nonprofit fiscal sponsor that handles
all of those contributions.
(38:54):
You can go to bookshop.org and find our wish list that has very specific books that we
would like in the machine that reflect the experiences of black children.
If there's a book that you loved when you were a kid and it's not on the list, you can still
order it and have it shipped to the store.
We're looking for specifically brand new books because I believe that kids deserve to have
a brand new book, just like you're walking out of a bookstore.
(39:16):
And so you can also donate directly to the store, which helps me keep the lights on,
operational costs, and just keep doing this work.
Really people can become involved with volunteering here in St. Louis, which is something that
I'll be introducing to the community very soon.
But also I just want to get the word out that if there is anybody who's learning about the
vending machine, I want them to be able to go and get their kid enrolled at the Herbert
(39:41):
Hoover Boys and Girls Club because that serves two purposes.
One, I want them to be interested in the books that are there, but also I want the enrollment
for Herbert Hoover to keep climbing and having more spaces for children to feel safe after
school and on the weekends and whenever else.
So maybe inspiring anyone who is watching this or listening to this podcast, what were
(40:04):
your favorite books growing up and we can skip ahead and what are you reading now?
So when I was a kid, I loved the Ramona series by Beverly Cleary.
I read all of the Ramona books.
I read the Ralph the Mouse.
I read all of those.
And I remember specifically being in third grade when this light kind of flipped on about
(40:26):
how much I liked reading.
And it wasn't something that I kind of really thought about, but that was the third grade.
That was the year that I started reading more and more chapter books and discovering that
there was this thing called a series where there was more than one book by that author
and reading the entire thing.
I love the Addy series by American Girl.
(40:46):
By the time I got to middle school, I was really into Gossip Girl and the sort of snobby
Upper East Side narratives.
I had no experience with that.
I was a black girl in the Midwest, but I was interested in it.
And so that's a good thing about books is it doesn't have to be your experience.
You can read whatever you want.
And currently today, I read a lot of nonfiction.
(41:08):
And so I get questions about, do I read a lot of books that have to do with enslavement
and the mistreatment of African Americans?
And the answer is no.
I guide my nonfiction choices based on what topics excite me or topics that kind of come
up that have me curious.
So right now I'm reading about Madam C.J. Walker because I'm really intrigued about
(41:31):
the constraints of the time period that she lived in and how she was able to create such
a successful business.
And I wanted to read more about her life story and where she came from and who she was as
a child and growing up and all of that.
But then I'm also really interested in black travel.
So I learned a lot and gave a presentation in my store about the Negro Green Book and
(41:54):
about how the automobile changed black people and changed how we moved about the country
and all of that and what that led to and sundown towns and those sorts of things.
So really, as far as nonfiction, I let topics and curiosity guide me.
As far as fiction, I love Toni Morrison.
I love Maya Angelou.
Right now I'm really excited about Kennedy Ryan, who is a romance novelist.
(42:18):
And I typically don't read romance, but I feel as though she writes the characters so
convincing.
It doesn't feel forced.
It doesn't feel like she's pandering to her own community.
She's just a really good writer.
And so I've been reading advanced reader copies of books that she's got coming out and just
trying to read everything that she has.
(42:39):
And she's one of those authors that made me remember how I felt when I was in third and
fourth grade when I got really excited about reading.
So where can people find more information about Noir Bookshop and where can people find
you specifically on social media?
So you obviously join in what you're doing there and the conversation that we're having.
(43:00):
Yeah.
So to find the Noir Bookshop, you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
The Noir Bookshop and on my website at NoirBookshop.com.
And for me specifically, you can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Imani Wentz.
It's just my first and last name, Y-M-A-N-I-W-I-N-C-E, where I'm talking about a lot of things.
(43:21):
And I feel like on my Instagram, you see a lot more behind the scenes of what it's like
for me to run a bookstore, as well as the books that I come across on a day-to-day basis
and just the musings and quips of a bookstore owner here in St. Louis.
As we're moving into the spring months, what's going to be coming down the pipeline here
for Noir Bookshop?
(43:42):
Well, I'm hoping to start the process of converting my business from LLC to a 503C.
And that's going to be a major undertaking.
I'm really excited about what that could look like, whether it'll be 100% nonprofit or something
like Semi-Colon did in Chicago, where only 30% of their inventory is for sale.
I'm interested in having more volunteers and just the events.
(44:05):
And I'm excited to throw another Juneteenth barbecue this summer and really just keep
up with St. Louis and keep the conversation moving forward about literacy and books being
good.
Imani, thanks so much for joining me on The Reading Revolution today.
It's been a pleasure to speak with you.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate this.
Thank you.
(44:26):
And that'll wrap up this episode of The Reading Revolution.
If you haven't already, please like, share, and subscribe to our YouTube channel and share
our podcast on your favorite podcast platforms, whatever that may be.
If you'd like to contact us or you have an idea for a guest you'd like to hear on the
show, email readingrevolutionpodatgmail.com.
My thanks to our technical directors and content creators, David Gagan and Thomas Crane.
(44:50):
The Reading Revolution is produced by Jake Blumberg and Connor Russo, and its executive
producer is Jay Blumberg.
I'm your host, Josh Gregory.
We'll see you next time, right here on The Reading Revolution.
Are you ready to embark on an adventure through the world of words?
(00:03):
Join us on the Reading Revolution and let's explore the exciting world of literacy together.
Hi and welcome back to the Reading Revolution powered by BookVending.com.
I'm your host, Josh Gregory.
We're heading down to St. Louis, Missouri for this episode to speak with Imani Witz,
the owner and creator of Noir Bookshop, a bookstore dedicated to the black experience
(00:23):
selling both new and used books by black authors and people of color.
It's a space designed to build community through educational programs and product offerings
and a great program called the Books Are Good Experiment.
We're going to jump into that right away.
Imani, thanks for joining us on the Reading Revolution.
Joshua, thank you so much for having me.
(00:44):
I really appreciate it.
So just to start things out, can you talk a little bit about this creation of your bookshop?
Where did the idea come from?
Yeah, so I like to say that so many ideas for Noir didn't come from just one specific
place.
They kind of came from different experiences.
It all happened at once, kind of like a big bang, I would say.
(01:07):
My background, I'm from St. Louis.
I grew up born and raised here.
I'm a product of the Ferguson Florissant School District.
I went to University of Missouri, Columbia, studied journalism.
And when I was in college, I had an internship every summer at our city's daily paper, the
St. Louis Post Dispatch.
And I was at the newsroom, I was in the newsroom August 9th, 2014.
(01:30):
And that was the day that Michael Brown was murdered here in St. Louis.
And so I was really seeing how a news station or news organization worked with that sort
of level of breaking news.
And that was unlike anything that I'd ever seen in St. Louis in my lifetime.
At the time I was 20 years old, I believe I was about to turn 21.
(01:50):
And it was incredible to see how journalists were moving and how for the first time, my
own identity was a part of a story, was a part of the overall message of what was happening.
And it really made me rethink where I want it to be professionally, if I want it to be
a sort of breaking news reporter, if I want it to be a journalist at all.
(02:12):
And so I experienced seeing what was happening on the ground, not only just with people in
Ferguson and protesting and the unrest, but also seeing what was happening in the newsroom
and how the stories were being formed and how not all newsrooms are unbiased.
And so that really informed a lot of how I saw myself as not only a Black woman, but
(02:33):
how I saw myself as a journalist and member of my own community.
Because again, I felt like I was now part of the story.
And so there was just a lot of things that have happened in St. Louis between 2014 and
now.
And so whenever these sorts of civil rights moments happened, whether it was Ferguson
or whether it was protesting during 2020 for George Floyd or just other things that were
(02:57):
happening in the St. Louis that have to do with civil rights and social justice, I would
think about if I had a bookstore at that time, what would it have done in the community?
How would it have existed?
And then historically with Black bookstores in general, they've always been third spaces.
They've always been places in the community where Black people could congregate and be
(03:20):
amongst themselves and learn and be educated.
Not only that, but just the importance of reading in the Black community from the United
States having laws that said the enslaved were not allowed to learn how to read to once
Juneteenth happened and the freeing of the enslaved in 1865 and some years thereafter.
(03:41):
That was the main thing on everyone's agenda was to learn how to read.
Frederick Douglass talked a lot about reading.
Madam C.J. Walker was born two years post slavery and her parents instilled in her to
learn how to read.
And so it was that kind of history that I thought about and just thinking about the
Black liberation movement during the 1960s and 70s where the sort of work, the sort of
(04:04):
bookstore that I have and promote would have definitely landed me on the FBI watch list.
And so I think about those sorts of historical moments and facts to try to keep in perspective
why my bookstore is needed, even when the highs and lows of an entrepreneur are real.
I keep that in the forefront.
And so I think about those reasons.
(04:24):
I think about where I was during Ferguson and my time in college.
And then I just thought about even as a hungry reader myself, I was not reading Black literature
until my final year of college.
And so reading is a privilege.
It's always been something that is a privilege.
But I wanted more people that look like me to have access to reading, to not only read
(04:46):
Black books, but to have a place where they could go that felt community oriented, that
functioned as a third space, but also supported the community in which it resides.
And so I always felt that bookstores should support the communities where they are and
that the idea of a bookstore shouldn't start and end with the retail or the sale of a book.
(05:08):
And so even though I didn't go into journalism full time, I was still writing for different
publications across the country once I finished school.
And I was writing also in St. Louis community interest stories.
I had been contributing to indie music in the St. Louis scene.
I had been writing community interest stories about people in my community.
(05:30):
And so I was always on Cherokee Street, which is in the creative community of Missouri in
St. Louis.
And so it's known as that.
And so there's a lot of different types of people on Cherokee Street.
It's a huge arts district.
It's a shopping district here in St. Louis.
And it's very eclectic.
And you see so many walks of life and so many ethnicities and nationalities on Cherokee
(05:54):
Street.
But also a lot of milestones for me happened in my 20s on Cherokee Street that really kind
of cemented me in the community.
And so when I decided I wanted to open a store, I imagined it being on Cherokee Street.
And I imagined it being this warm, wonderful place where people could not only learn about
(06:14):
Black history, but they could buy books, they could host events, there could be story times.
And I really saw that the market and the opportunity for that, not only in St. Louis city, but
just in general, was wide open.
What a unique way to give back to the community and bolster that idea of how important reading
it is.
(06:35):
We see statistics all the time from all walks of life that everyone seems to be struggling,
especially at the younger years, to get kids to read.
And it's amazing that you're being able to pull in a whole bunch of different things.
But at the end of the day, showing that importance.
And I just can't get my arms around it.
We all know how important it is, yet we still struggle to do it as a society.
(06:58):
Yeah, I agree.
And I think one of the things that has worked for me is I was 27 turning 28 when I opened
my store, when I really began conceptualizing the Noir Bookshop, because it didn't start
as a full on brick and mortar idea.
It started in 2020 as I wanted people to be able to pick up books.
(07:20):
So the thing that I loved in quarantine was the curbside pickup.
And so their local independent bookstores in my neighborhood, in my community, where
I could look and see if they had a certain book online.
And if it was in stock, I was picking it up in two hours from their stoop with my mask
on.
And so the being cooped up from March till May, it was a really great opportunity just
(07:41):
to get outside and have fresh air and walk around, see the birds, see the trees and then
pick up books.
And so I had been on Instagram and I was seeing a lot of vintage covers of black literature
and I was really intrigued by that seeing books like Song of Solomon or Tar Baby by
Toni Morrison and how the covers changed throughout the years with different editions and different
(08:03):
printings.
But then also just seeing all the other black books that had these amazing books that I
don't see anymore that are not currently being printed.
And so I was interested not only in reading the stories, but kind of just collecting the
books themselves.
And so I would buy them on eBay.
I would buy them from other vintage booksellers.
I would scour the internet for these copies.
(08:24):
And once I got them, I started posting them to an Instagram account called Little Noir
Library.
And so that's how it started.
And so I never really set out to be a bookseller.
It was more like I was selling information and telling people about these books and showing
them the page with the copyright information and what year it was printed and what edition
and why that matters and what happened that year when this book was printed.
(08:47):
And so it really my skill has always been being a communicator and telling people information
and talking about books in a sort of passionate way.
And I was selling these books for next to nothing, maybe $5 or less, or if it was something
that was really cool, maybe it was $12.
But really, I just wanted people to know about what I was doing and to know about books and
(09:08):
to create an online community because all we had at that time was Zoom and curbside
pickup.
And everything that I got, people wanted it.
They bought it.
They would pick it up from my stoop.
And things returned to normal a little bit or normal as we knew them during 2021 to 2022.
And I went back to work and I was working in tech at the time.
(09:32):
And by December of 2021, the idea just kind of came around a little bit more again.
And I was on YouTube and I was seeing Black women my age who had opened bookstores and
it just kind of opened this portal into the bookselling world and me discovering so many
different Black bookstores around the country.
(09:53):
But I say so many, but Black booksellers only make up about 6% or less of the bookselling
industry.
So at the time that I opened my store, I think maybe there was 125 stores at the time.
But now there's I think close to 150 or just a little bit over it of Black-owned bookstores.
So it really just shows you out of the 2500 plus independent bookstores in the US, not
(10:18):
even 10% of them are Black-owned.
So that was another big thing, just seeing all of that and kind of putting these ideas
together and I'm a person of community who's created by community and I shop small, I shop
local.
I told you Cherokee Street has been a place that was very important to me.
So at one point in time, all of my disposable income was going to different businesses
(10:43):
on Cherokee Street, whether I was shopping at a Black-owned craft beer store or shopping
at my friend's antique store or shopping for furniture, all of that was contained on Cherokee
Street.
So I really wanted to create a place where small business owners or people who had products
were Black and Brown could have their products in a storefront, but also you had access to
(11:05):
books, you had access to community events, you had access to information.
And so that's really been the driving force of it, even though the store is based on three
pillars, those three pillars all mean something else, all mean something important to the
store and they all have events and books and things that follow those pillars and just
the way that I run the store.
(11:25):
But really I set out to put books in the community and that's still true today.
I look at a lot of different industries, a lot of different neighborhoods where at one
point in time they were really strong, close knit communities that you're describing right
now.
We kind of got away from that, but there seems to be a resurgence of building those neighborhoods
(11:47):
back and with the personality and the passion that you're bringing, what was it like when
you first started?
How did the community receive, not only that there's a bookshop in town dedicated to the
Black experience, but it's from someone who is from here trying to build that community?
That's an interesting question because when I look at my journey with the bookstore and
(12:11):
even when I look at myself when people ask, how does it feel?
I don't really see myself as being up here or above where I am or even just I see it
as amazing, but I don't internalize it and have an ego about it.
But I honestly didn't expect for people to or for my community to be so welcome and open
(12:33):
to the idea as quickly as it happened.
Like I said, I announced in December of 2021 that I wanted to open a bookstore and so I
put that online because I had already been coming up with a business plan.
I was getting things cemented with my state, getting a business ID, getting a business
license, trying to figure out all of those steps of establishing an LLC and what did
(12:56):
that look like?
And just researching as I was doing it, I was learning about bookselling as I was building
a bookshop.
And so really my thoughts were to be on the campaign trail for six to eight months, which
would include pop-ups around the city so that people could understand me as a bookseller
versus me as a journalist in the city.
(13:18):
And so I wanted to get that community buy-in and that credibility.
And one of the biggest ways I did that was by having a pop-up at an already established
store here in St. Louis and a lot of people came to that event.
And this store owner, he allowed me to use his store for the weekend and turn it into
a bookstore.
And so it was held in February and I called the event For the Lovers.
(13:42):
So Toni Morrison's birthday is in February, but also we celebrate Black History Month
in February as well as Valentine's Day.
And so I created this sort of themed event of books all about love, no matter what type
of love that it was about.
And I had pound cake, I had merchandise, I had candles, I had all of these elements
(14:02):
of a store just as a pop-up for two days.
And it was wildly successful.
I was so busy, I didn't really get to enjoy the pop-up because I was constantly ringing
people up for their books, for their hoodies, for all sorts of things.
And people were donating to my cause and it was just unreal to see that people were excited
(14:24):
about a bookstore.
And not only that, it had snowed in St. Louis that week.
And so I was nervous that people weren't going to come out because of how cold it was and
there was ice on the ground and all of that.
And the shop owner, Chris, he made sure there was salt on the sidewalk, made sure that things
were shoveled and just people showed up.
And so my store, I tell people I never had to really go look for a physical space for
(14:50):
the bookstore because the space presented itself to me.
And so with the revenue that I had from that one event, I signed a lease for a store three
days later.
That's amazing.
And you must have had, or maybe not, I guess I should rephrase that question.
When you're doing this, did you have a team of people that were helping you or just a
(15:10):
couple of folks or were you really all on your own when you were establishing yourself
in that space?
Yeah.
So I'm a Leo and I have a very get it done sort of attitude.
I don't like waiting on other people.
I don't like too many people's hands in the pot.
So from then till now, it has always been a one woman show.
I'm very close to my first hires this year and very close to establishing a team of volunteers
(15:35):
for all the nonprofit work that I'm doing.
But it has been a one woman show, which has worked for me and against me at times.
But at that point, I had sort of grassroots people that were helping me fund it, who I
had, I will always tell people I had a coworker who we didn't talk that often.
We just did our jobs and worked, you know, collaboratively on teams.
(15:59):
But she was the first donation that I got for my entire venture.
And she gave me a thousand dollars.
And that blew my mind that a colleague who I didn't know that well would give me a thousand
dollars.
And I'll never forget that she said, when I was starting my business, this helped me
a lot.
So I wanted to pay it forward.
And so when I get to the space where I can just give out money as a bookshop, I definitely
(16:21):
want to establish that sort of, I guess, scholarship of a thousand dollars to give away to a beginning
business owner as a nod to Lisa for giving me that money.
And so it's never been anybody kind of helping me with the book process or helping me lug
things around the city.
I have had friends who have seen me in places who will help me pack up my car when it's
(16:42):
time to go.
But the day to day, the creation of it has been me.
When you mentioned that there's a number of different events going on, and obviously these
other pillars that I want to get into as we continue the conversation, they all seem to
work hand in hand.
How did you get that kind of synergy for those three things to work?
(17:05):
You know, when I'm going to open a bookstore, you think, oh, that's all we're going to do
here.
But that's not what's happening in the walls of your store.
Yeah.
So all of my life experiences I credit to helping me open my bookstore.
So when I was creating the store, I was working for an ad tech firm called Advocato here in
(17:26):
St. Louis.
And they are, I will say Google's answer to the cookie.
And so that kind of tells you a little bit about what they do.
But it was a scrappy startup that was really doing well.
And I really enjoyed our co-CEOs and CFO.
And the thing that I loved about the company is that it was founded on three pillars and
(17:51):
those three pillars helped move everything through the company.
And so I worked in marketing.
And so the messaging fit one of those pillars online where you had to use these colors if
you're talking about X, Y, and Z on LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook.
And the pillars really kept everything in order.
And when you think about our government, our government has three branches, which offers
(18:11):
those checks and balances.
And so those three pillars in the company offer checks and balances.
And it was a nod to always understanding why you did a certain thing at the company, whether
it was a technical skill or how you treated your colleagues or how you were treated as
an employee.
All of those things went hand in hand.
And I was really inspired by that.
(18:32):
And since I was so close to the team and so close to making the biscuits, I was able to
see in real time how that worked and how that kept everything running.
And so when I started the store, I felt like I should follow that sort of model, that sort
of template of what are my pillars?
What is really going to keep this bookstore going?
(18:53):
What is going to give it meaning?
And even as the bookstore has been a living and sort of breathing idea, the business plan
that I started with is not the business plan I'm functioning on today.
And the three pillars have kind of kept that in check for me.
And there's some there's been times where I'm looking at how I want to do an event or
I'm looking at what I want to do in the next few months or where I want my business to
(19:16):
go as an end game.
And those three pillars will reveal something to me that I didn't think about before based
on me having my store open, me having day to day experience in the store, me learning
new things.
The pillars in themselves are the same, but the way I look at it has changed.
And I love inspiration.
It's such a wonderful word and being able to translate to other folks that inspiration
(19:43):
can come from books, whether you're a young child just learning how to read or an adult
who's well read, that inspiration exists in these books that folks can buy.
And then honestly down the road, probably even share on their own.
Yeah.
And when I say that there are aspects of the store that correlate with each pillar, you're
(20:03):
speaking to that directly.
Now books will fit in each one of those content buckets for education, inspiration and community,
but it's also being able to see what you want to be.
And so whether that's the characters of children's books or the books in the store that are offered,
the topics of the books that are offered in the store, that it also includes authors that
(20:24):
visit the store.
It includes the entrepreneurs who I allow to sell products in the store, to have pop-ups
in the store.
That's inspiration or even something that's worked for me as I'm young, I'm relatively
young.
And so I feel like just that in itself from the way that I present myself, the way I dress,
the way that I talk, the way that I just kind of show up as myself.
(20:48):
I consider myself like a black Ms. Frizzle or I'm a big kid that still loves to wear
sneakers with dresses and all of that.
I feel like that makes it accessible to people that I don't come across as a stuffy, I
don't come across as an academic just because I love books.
And so I think just me being myself and me being a black woman that was, a black woman
(21:12):
and that has been able to stand up and say, I like these things, here are all of my interests,
come to my store that's supposed to feel like my grandma's house.
But also I'm not afraid to take a chance even if the whole thing doesn't work.
I told myself that I would commit at least one year of my life to try to bring this idea
forward because the pandemic had happened and I felt like, well, why wait?
(21:34):
Why wait on all these things to happen?
And there were some figures in Hollywood that had passed away during that time that I was
devastated by.
And I felt like, well, why wait to get these things accomplished?
And so I think that that serves as an inspiration within itself and just me telling people,
listen, you don't have to like books just as much as I do, but you can find something
(21:56):
that you can grasp onto and hold onto that will help you live a life of your very best
possibilities.
And I like the approach that you have with being able to promote the idea of reading
from a lot of different genres and not just getting stuck in one thing.
I know a lot of us have that experience in high school and college where these are the
(22:17):
books you're going to read and maybe not necessarily keeping a closed mind to just these books,
being open to all different authors, all different backgrounds.
How important that is to really build on our foundation of being able to interact in society
in a meaningful way.
I think it speaks to the idea that we are all different, you know, and I think it's
(22:40):
easy to, if you're not from a certain racial group, to kind of lump people in together.
But if there's anything that I've learned about this experience, even from being a black
person myself, is that we are all different.
And I've had African American people, black people come into my store who said, you know,
this is the first time I'm just now getting into reading black authors.
(23:02):
What would you recommend?
Or I've met plenty of black people who have come into the store and let me know they were
adopted by a Catholic family or they were adopted by a white family and a German family,
and they were the only black person in their high school or they were the only black kids
in their town.
And so they're looking for connection and looking for context of, you know, learning
(23:22):
about where they come from and who they are.
And so I think just offering a space like mine where I try to make the books accessible
and make them attractive to people to want to read without feeling like you have to have
gone to college, you had to have had experiences like Imani.
No, books are good and books are for everyone.
And I think just being in the community and being able to experience that and being able
(23:47):
to touch it with my hands, literally, I have learned and I've seen that where people are
economically has nothing to do with their interests and what's going on in their head.
I've given away books in the poorest of neighborhoods and went back to my store without a single
book.
So people are attracted to books.
(24:08):
People are interested in them.
And I just really wanted to bridge that gap and to show that no matter who you are or
where you come from, information is a human right.
Now you're incorporating an Inchi the Bookworm book vending machine in, you know, Noir Bookshop.
Can you tell me how the idea for that came around and what was the idea behind it just
(24:29):
to say, you know, we're going to incorporate this unique machine into our community as
yet another way to promote the idea of literacy and how important it is?
Yeah, so I stumbled upon the company by chance.
I had had the idea of a vending machine maybe about four or five months into owning my store
(24:50):
and running my store.
But then after experiencing all four seasons in my brick and mortar space, I was able to
see what times of the year were busier than others, when the foot traffic was good, etc.
But then also, I was noticing that children weren't actually coming to the store that
often if they were with a parent, sure, but I wasn't really seeing kids walking around
(25:12):
in the neighborhood.
And so I really thought about that.
And I was thinking, how can I get books where they are, where kids are, where other people
are?
And so initially, I thought, okay, I can put a vending machine in the airport, I can put
a vending machine in the mall.
And it started as a, okay, I can make revenue in these ways as well.
(25:33):
But then on the back end outside of the store, I had started working at a local charter school.
And so I was building libraries for K through four in middle school.
But I was also, excuse me, teaching reading intervention, I was working with kids one
on one and doing book groups and teaching kids how to read.
And it really opened my eyes up in person to the disparities of reading proficiency
(25:57):
of black children and children in my city.
And so that really got me thinking, okay, how do we bridge this gap now?
And so in between that time, so all these things are happening concurrently.
And in between that time, I had applied for a grant here in St. Louis.
And I told them that I wanted to have a network of vending machines in different places throughout
(26:20):
the city where I could give out free books.
And so I would need the funding for that.
And my proposal was accepted and the Noir Bookshop did receive a grant.
And so since then, I've been working on everything to get a vending machine to kids.
And so I wanted the machine to exist in a high traffic high impact area where I knew
(26:41):
kids will interact with it and that there would be adults to kind of help guide that
process.
And I know that typically, you see these vending machines in either schools or you see them
in libraries.
And they're typically, you know, run by a group of people and they're run by an organization.
But this was just me.
And so I started really researching more about the vending machine.
(27:03):
And I'd seen, I forget the lady's first name, but her name online is Storybook Maze.
And I was seeing the work that she did in Baltimore.
And I was like, that's really cool.
And I just started learning more about the machine itself.
And I realized that it could work and it could work with the grant.
And so I chose the Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Club.
(27:25):
It's in North St. Louis.
And that is an organization that is just as personal to me as it is to a lot of people
in St. Louis.
If you look at several athletes that have come from football and basketball, they spent
a lot of time at that specific location.
And it's housed in North St. Louis, which is a hard socially economically hit area.
(27:45):
But that location for the Boys and Girls Club has historically produced amazing athletes
and has produced amazing people that have gone on to college and have really lived out
their dreams because they had somewhere safe to go and people that cared for them and people
that put in that development with children.
And they have really upgraded their facilities since I was a kid.
(28:07):
And so that was the first place that I knew I wanted it to go.
And they service, I believe they said they service over 200 kids a day, Monday through
Friday.
And so I just know that the machine would get the sort of attention and the sort of
use that I wanted it to.
But it also served two purposes.
St. Louis City.
(28:27):
St. Louis City is rough for Black children.
It's rough just socioeconomically, but also just physically.
And so one of the reasons why I stopped putting books into little libraries was because a
lot of the little libraries on in the harder hit part of the city, harder hit parts of
the city, they physically need help.
(28:48):
And so I didn't want to collect all these books from the community and then go put them
out into the elements or put them in places where they wouldn't or they would be damaged.
But also little libraries work when people have something to put back into them.
And like I said, a lot of people do not have the disposable income of just buying books
to give them away again, or even just having book ownership as a whole.
(29:12):
And so my goal was to hit all of these things to help with reading proficiency, to build
one's own personal library, and also to just put books in the community.
And so if I know that this machine is going to be safe inside Herbert Hoover Boys and
Girls Club, there's kids coming through every single day, even on the weekends, I know that
they're going to love this free token machine that has books in it.
(29:34):
And just imagine, you know, I was a kid who loved to read.
And when I discovered the concept of a series, that was amazing for me.
So imagine you have a series that you love and you're reading the first book in the Hunger
Games series, and then you see all the other ones are right there and all you have to do
is come back and get it when you're ready.
That makes me so excited because I know that there is a kid, there are many kids out there
(29:59):
that would just love to be able to go and just get books and have them.
You know, libraries are wonderful.
They're institutions that I think more people nowadays don't use as much with the advent
of being able to download something to your phone or your tablet, laptop, what may come
in or be something that they're just more interested in.
(30:19):
But what you were just talking about is kind of the really fun part of a book store or
a book vending machine.
It's the magic of the ownership that this is mine now.
I don't have to take this back.
This is my copy.
There really is some magic in that.
Yeah, I agree.
And as you say that, I think about all of the books that I had growing up.
(30:43):
One of the things that I learned was that in St. Louis City specifically, the statistic
is that, you know, 97 to 99 percent of households will never interact with 100 books over a
20 year period.
And I can't even I'm sure I've interacted with thousands of books in my 30 years, but
that was an alarming statistic.
And for for the time that I was working at a school and I was doing library duties, kids
(31:08):
would come in and they would say, does my mom have to pay for this or I don't have any
money for these books?
They didn't understand the concept of borrowing.
And so at the end of the school year, the school allowed me to just give away brand
new books that were donated.
And the look on their faces when they were able to take home a bag of books for the summer
or when their parents came to pick them up and they were like, oh, are these free?
(31:30):
Everyone was excited about it.
And that's that's where I started coining the term books are good.
That has been the campaign for the machine that has been what's etched on the side of
my glasses.
And I put it everywhere because in a time like now, especially in a state like Missouri,
where books are being banned and you have people literally burning physical copies of
books and kids can't read, how do you deny that books are good?
(31:55):
Books are good.
And so that's that's really been the forefront of my campaign and just the noir bookshop
and the vending machine in general.
But the book ownership is something that I really wanted to hone in on, because again,
I believe that information is a human right.
And this was not about me selling books.
It was about me trying to bridge the gap and trying to move the ball down the field, so
(32:18):
to speak, to help black children in St. Louis become proficient in reading and grow a love
of books.
It amazes me that we know there is a literacy problem in this country.
Yet there is a group of folks who want to take away even more material that might even
boost those scores in literacy and get kids, adults, whoever it may be, more interested
(32:42):
in reading.
I just read an article from New Mexico that the state is looking at a proposal.
I know it's been introduced into their into their house to ban the banning of books to
stop this kind of, you know, we need to ban these books.
Where does this mentality come from in your estimation that, you know, I don't like it,
(33:05):
therefore it's no good?
I think that a lot of content in books, especially when you're thinking of books like 1619 Project
or The Bluest Eye or any sort of book where BIPOC individuals are telling you their experiences,
that kind of hits at something that's close to home for a lot of people in the U.S.
(33:26):
And I believe that it's that that idea of we don't want to talk about that or, oh, that
was so long ago or why can't we just get over it?
And it's well, these things didn't happen that so long ago.
My grandfather turned 81 in 2023 and he lived less than 100 miles away from where Emmett
Till was murdered and they were the same age that summer.
(33:49):
So it doesn't it wasn't that long ago.
And my goal, of course, has not been to necessarily just push traumatic stories about Black people.
It has been to uplift stories that Black people have told.
And so I think the issue that lobbyists against books or people who are so strongly against
(34:10):
books, certain books, certain book topics or certain book titles, I really think that
the problem is that they don't want to confront the truth.
They don't want to analyze that.
They don't want to start connecting the connecting the dots and then say, well, wait a minute.
Great great grandfather fought in the Civil War and he lived in this town that was established.
Whoa.
(34:31):
You know, they don't want to confront those sorts of things.
And I don't think that giving children the access to certain books about race, about
sex, about gender, about whatever topic that people think is just no good is going to affect
you personally.
It doesn't just like I can't expect Cardi B to raise my kid based on a based on a song
(34:52):
she puts on the radio.
It's about you as a parent or you as an individual, you as an educator offering the access and
also being responsible enough to help your kid know the difference between this and that
or to teach them right from wrong.
And so honestly, I think it's more so people's personal issues that they can't come to terms
(35:13):
with.
But I don't believe that one individual or a handful of people should be able to decide
what my future kids can read and what they have access to.
So there is an importance when talking about the promotion of reading and literacy to not
only focus on the act of reading and how to read, but also the issues and the other things
(35:33):
that are surrounding it.
It all needs to be part of the discussion if we're to see this issue with illiteracy
start to dwindle and have more people just being literate enough to get through life.
Yeah, I think often about my own family.
My grandfather had to stop going to school when he was in the fourth grade.
(35:54):
So he didn't have the sort of same opportunities as me and as his children.
And so to have a grandfather to have living grandparents and one of them, their options
was to either be a sharecropper or figure something else out and leave Mississippi.
And now his granddaughter owns a bookstore.
I think that that is, I think that's a big deal.
(36:15):
And it also serves twofold to show that we're not that far away from what my grandfather's
childhood was like, but also promoting that you can get further than the past generations.
But also those past generations allowed me to get further.
If my grandfather had not left Mississippi and come to St. Louis and met my grandma,
(36:36):
there'd be no my dad, there'd be no me.
And so I really am thankful for the history and for all of that.
But also it serves as a driving force for me to remember where I came from, to remember
sacrifices of African-Americans in this country.
And for me, it just really solidifies that literacy is important.
Frederick Douglass has a quote that is something to the effect of, you learn to read and you
(37:00):
will forever be free.
And when he said that, the context of the day was he was a former slave.
He did live in the United States post slavery and during it.
And I keep bringing that up because we don't talk enough about how important it is that
the former enslaved learn to read and why they were not allowed to learn to read when
(37:23):
they were enslaved and how it's so important that third graders become proficient in reading
at third grade.
That the state of Missouri is looking at test scores to decide how large to build gym sales.
And they're looking at that data and all of these things are connected.
And so when I tell kids, you don't have to love books just as much as me, but you need
(37:47):
to find something that you are interested in.
And you need to learn how to read and you need to know your letters.
You need to have phonemic awareness.
You need to be in school because if you're in school, we're going to break that school
to prison pipeline.
We're going to break those disparities in the black community, or at least like I say,
move the ball down the field.
(38:08):
When you're in school, you have something to hold onto.
You're going to do that homework because you want to go to school for football.
So the literacy, it's not just learning how to read and enjoying books.
It's setting yourself up to be forever free.
And building on that sense of community, another one of the pillars that we've touched on a
little bit here, how can people get involved with Noir Bookshop and the reading experiment
(38:34):
that you've got with the Inchy the Bookworm book vending machine?
So right now there are three main ways to get involved with that.
On my website, on our homepage, you can either donate directly to the machine itself, which
will be a tax deductible donation through our nonprofit fiscal sponsor that handles
all of those contributions.
(38:54):
You can go to bookshop.org and find our wish list that has very specific books that we
would like in the machine that reflect the experiences of black children.
If there's a book that you loved when you were a kid and it's not on the list, you can still
order it and have it shipped to the store.
We're looking for specifically brand new books because I believe that kids deserve to have
a brand new book, just like you're walking out of a bookstore.
(39:16):
And so you can also donate directly to the store, which helps me keep the lights on,
operational costs, and just keep doing this work.
Really people can become involved with volunteering here in St. Louis, which is something that
I'll be introducing to the community very soon.
But also I just want to get the word out that if there is anybody who's learning about the
vending machine, I want them to be able to go and get their kid enrolled at the Herbert
(39:41):
Hoover Boys and Girls Club because that serves two purposes.
One, I want them to be interested in the books that are there, but also I want the enrollment
for Herbert Hoover to keep climbing and having more spaces for children to feel safe after
school and on the weekends and whenever else.
So maybe inspiring anyone who is watching this or listening to this podcast, what were
(40:04):
your favorite books growing up and we can skip ahead and what are you reading now?
So when I was a kid, I loved the Ramona series by Beverly Cleary.
I read all of the Ramona books.
I read the Ralph the Mouse.
I read all of those.
And I remember specifically being in third grade when this light kind of flipped on about
(40:26):
how much I liked reading.
And it wasn't something that I kind of really thought about, but that was the third grade.
That was the year that I started reading more and more chapter books and discovering that
there was this thing called a series where there was more than one book by that author
and reading the entire thing.
I love the Addy series by American Girl.
(40:46):
By the time I got to middle school, I was really into Gossip Girl and the sort of snobby
Upper East Side narratives.
I had no experience with that.
I was a black girl in the Midwest, but I was interested in it.
And so that's a good thing about books is it doesn't have to be your experience.
You can read whatever you want.
And currently today, I read a lot of nonfiction.
(41:08):
And so I get questions about, do I read a lot of books that have to do with enslavement
and the mistreatment of African Americans?
And the answer is no.
I guide my nonfiction choices based on what topics excite me or topics that kind of come
up that have me curious.
So right now I'm reading about Madam C.J. Walker because I'm really intrigued about
(41:31):
the constraints of the time period that she lived in and how she was able to create such
a successful business.
And I wanted to read more about her life story and where she came from and who she was as
a child and growing up and all of that.
But then I'm also really interested in black travel.
So I learned a lot and gave a presentation in my store about the Negro Green Book and
(41:54):
about how the automobile changed black people and changed how we moved about the country
and all of that and what that led to and sundown towns and those sorts of things.
So really, as far as nonfiction, I let topics and curiosity guide me.
As far as fiction, I love Toni Morrison.
I love Maya Angelou.
Right now I'm really excited about Kennedy Ryan, who is a romance novelist.
(42:18):
And I typically don't read romance, but I feel as though she writes the characters so
convincing.
It doesn't feel forced.
It doesn't feel like she's pandering to her own community.
She's just a really good writer.
And so I've been reading advanced reader copies of books that she's got coming out and just
trying to read everything that she has.
(42:39):
And she's one of those authors that made me remember how I felt when I was in third and
fourth grade when I got really excited about reading.
So where can people find more information about Noir Bookshop and where can people find
you specifically on social media?
So you obviously join in what you're doing there and the conversation that we're having.
(43:00):
Yeah.
So to find the Noir Bookshop, you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
The Noir Bookshop and on my website at NoirBookshop.com.
And for me specifically, you can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Imani Wentz.
It's just my first and last name, Y-M-A-N-I-W-I-N-C-E, where I'm talking about a lot of things.
(43:21):
And I feel like on my Instagram, you see a lot more behind the scenes of what it's like
for me to run a bookstore, as well as the books that I come across on a day-to-day basis
and just the musings and quips of a bookstore owner here in St. Louis.
As we're moving into the spring months, what's going to be coming down the pipeline here
for Noir Bookshop?
(43:42):
Well, I'm hoping to start the process of converting my business from LLC to a 503C.
And that's going to be a major undertaking.
I'm really excited about what that could look like, whether it'll be 100% nonprofit or something
like Semi-Colon did in Chicago, where only 30% of their inventory is for sale.
I'm interested in having more volunteers and just the events.
(44:05):
And I'm excited to throw another Juneteenth barbecue this summer and really just keep
up with St. Louis and keep the conversation moving forward about literacy and books being
good.
Imani, thanks so much for joining me on The Reading Revolution today.
It's been a pleasure to speak with you.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate this.
Thank you.
(44:26):
And that'll wrap up this episode of The Reading Revolution.
If you haven't already, please like, share, and subscribe to our YouTube channel and share
our podcast on your favorite podcast platforms, whatever that may be.
If you'd like to contact us or you have an idea for a guest you'd like to hear on the
show, email readingrevolutionpodatgmail.com.
My thanks to our technical directors and content creators, David Gagan and Thomas Crane.
(44:50):
The Reading Revolution is produced by Jake Blumberg and Connor Russo, and its executive
producer is Jay Blumberg.
I'm your host, Josh Gregory.
We'll see you next time, right here on The Reading Revolution.
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