Asha Grant sits on a church pew near a table covered in vintage magazines. In the months leading up to the opening of the Salt Eaters Bookshop, she sourced the pew online from a soon-to-be shuttered church and the coffee table belonged to her grandmother.
Grant says she wanted the Inglewood, California, bookstore to be imbued with a sense of home and inclusion. Bright pink wallpaper with a pattern of Zora Neale Hurston adds a pop of color, and upon entering, there’s a mirror with photos of Grant’s maternal grandmother and great-aunt. A quilt draped behind the pew was a community project and allowed people to donate denim and stitch it together.
Every element of the Salt Eaters Bookshop comes back to Black culture and community. On its shelves, visitors can find books that center on “Black women, girls, femmes and gender expansive people”, Grant explains.
“There’s markers of Blackness and our experience everywhere throughout the generations,” she said. “There will be a grandma who comes in [and] she’ll see the church pew and be like, “Oh, my God, this reminds me of when I was a little girl, and I would take a nap on the church pew. There’s some parents who will come in with their kids and they’ll pick up Jet magazines and be like, ‘You don’t know nothing about this. But back in my day, Jet magazine was everything.’ It’s nice to see how people just interact with the space without me.”
Grant founded the Los Angeles chapter of the Free Black Women’s Library, a project created by New York-based artist, OlaRonke Akinmowo in 2015, before opening the brick and mortar store. The beginnings of the mobile, pop-up library centered on communal exchange: folks could take a book off the shelves and leave another one behind for the next reader. In Los Angeles, the Free Black Women’s Library delivered books to restaurants and cafés. Now, there’s a permanent, dedicated section for the library in the Salt Eaters Bookshop, whose name is derived from The Salt Eaters, novel by Toni Cade Bambara.
The book store is one of hundreds that have opened in the United States since the start of the pandemic, with many being owned by people or color. Independent bookstores and authors of color also saw an increased interest during a racial reckoning following the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
The Pulitzer Center reported independent book sales grew by 75% when comparing the first quarter of 2021 to the same quarter in 2020. Allison Hill, executive director of The American Booksellers Association, said 335 independent bookstores have opened their doors since the beginning of the pandemic.
“Even more exciting is the growth in the number of stores owned by people of color and stores committed to creating spaces where people can find themselves and their experiences reflected in books,” Hill said. “As a space that centers and celebrates the stories of Black women, girls, femmes, and nonbinary people, the Salt Eaters Bookshop is a wonderful and important addition to the independent bookstore community.”
‘Servicing a community’
Between watching the news cycle and seeing the impacts of the pandemic, as well as the rising numbers of murders of Black trans women, Grant decided to pursue her idea of creating a safe space for Black communities.
In 2020, she launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise $65,000 in funds to secure a location in Inglewood and cover the costs of opening and maintaining the bookstore for a year. People started contributing quickly, and author Roxane Gay shared the campaign on Twitter. Within the first week it surpassed the goal, raising over $84,000.
The store soft-launched in 2021 and has allowed Grant to meet a lot of people in real life, after mostly interacting with them online and through social media. The bookstore has quickly become a literary gathering space. It hosted an online poetry reading with Claudia Rankine, in collaboration with Cal State Los Angeles, and a virtual author chat with Morgan Parker and Safia Elhillo. When singer Michelle Williams published her book, Checking In, the bookshop was part of her virtual book tour line-up. Recent in-person events include a queer book club meeting and a conversation featuring Love Radio author Ebony LaDelle and All Boys Aren’t Blue author George M Johnson (complete with a DJ set by DJ Kita).
“The Salt Eaters, or any bookstore for that matter, really is about servicing a community,” LaDelle said. “From the moment I stepped in I felt the intention to serve people like me and readers like mine. Sometimes you notice that in the smallest things – like how their curation of merch and decor were also from Black creatives, or how their hours are limited for their own personal mental health and the health of their staff members, it shows.”
Ashley M Coleman, freelance writer and Good Morning, Love author, was following the store on social media, and later hosted an author event in the space. She says the staff brought her flowers and a card that made her feel immediately welcomed, especially as a debut novelist.
“Black and POC writers were really marginalized in the regular bookstore landscape. There would be one section for Black or Urban literature. I remember that distinctly, coming up as a young reader – just having this very small space,” she says. “It’s absolutely amazing to see spaces like The Salt Eaters where the front and foremost displays are Black and POC women or gender-expansive people. That really creates a sense of pride that it expands beyond the constraints of just one bookshelf in a larger store.”
Elise Bryant, author of Happily Ever Afters and One True Loves, also notes that the Salt Eaters Bookshop felt like an “affirming space”.
“I walked in and immediately felt like I belonged – and as a Black woman, that was not an experience I’d had at any bookstore before,” Bryant said.
‘Suspended in between something’
The bookshop is attempting to add a jolt of energy to Inglewood’s Market Street, a once bustling commercial district with major chain stores in the 1920s. The metropolitan area continued to evolve over the decades and in 1949, the Inglewood Fox Theatre was built with amenities that made it stand out as an innovative space (it even had air conditioning). The theatre was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013, “becoming the first property on Market Street to achieve this milestone”, according to the Los Angeles Historic Theatre foundation. The theatre was a staple, but it would fall into disrepair and restoration efforts are still up in the air.
In recent years, Market Street has struggled to keep businesses open and increase foot traffic to the restaurants and stores dotted along the block. In 2019, business owners in the area told Curbed they were closing because of rent prices and lack of customers.
Los Angeles residents worried about a major shift in home and business prices when the NFL announced the Rams and Chargers would be moving to Inglewood in 2016, and feared gentrification and construction would make the area unaffordable. The building of the SoFi stadium and plans for a new Metro rail meant an influx of people to the area. Inglewood’s growth caused home prices to soar 37%, Curbed reported.
In February, SoFi stadium hosted 2022 Super Bowl LVI, bringing huge crowds into the neighborhood, but the event caused local shops to miss business due to closed streets and less foot traffic, Grant said.
Recently, she noticed a luxury apartment building under construction.
Grant fears the bookstore’s rent might increase in the near future after neighbors have told her their rent has doubled. She says it’s exciting to be in the midst of Black-owned businesses such as Residency art gallery, Sip & Sonder and Hilltop Cafe, but she’s still wary of what might happen next.
“It feels like you’re suspended in between something and you know what’s coming and you know what was behind,” Grant said. “And it just hasn’t all completely flipped.”
But Grant is hopeful and has been thrilled to see the attention the bookshop has received from the community. There’s a sitting area created “for folks to feel like they could stay awhile”, and a small table nearby invites kids to draw and color. Educators often walk in looking for specific books for students, and many people come in search of a distraction.
“Being a bookseller and being a bookstore owner is like being a doctor. There’s customers that come in and they’re like, ‘I’ve just been really looking for something light. I’m really over the news cycle and all this stuff. Do you have something I can just escape to?’” Grant said. “It feels like I’m able to just help folks get where they need to go through books.”
Genres like Afro-Futurism and self-help were high on visitors’ lists, so Grant started including more books in those areas. The store has also hosted meditation and breath work sessions.
“Reading is a really intimate and solo activity,” Grant said. “You still need that time where you’re just quietly with yourself.”
