Books in the Hood offers readers a new place to shop
By Insanul Ahmed
insanulahmed@yahoo.com
Photo by Insanul Ahmed
Jared Harris, the owner’s son, browses at Books in the Hood.
Bookstores in the Bronx are as rare as rain in the desert. In fact, there are only three in the entire borough, but the newest of them serves the South Bronx.
Books in the Hood, at 815 Westchester Avenue, about 50 feet from the Prospect Avenue subway station, opened in February. Its presence still surprises residents.
“All the time kids come in here and ask: ‘Is this is a library?’” exclaimed Laverne T. Harris, 59, the store’s owner.
As a little girl, Harris dreamed of becoming a teacher and opening up her own school. She has spent the last 30 years teaching. She currently works as a literacy coach at PS 130, the Abram Steven Hewitt School, on Prospect Avenue near the store. Instead of founding a school, she has opened a bookstore.
Harris, who grew up on the corner of Simpson and 167th streets and now lives in Westchester, realized about seven years ago that there were no bookstores in her neighborhood, even though there are 20 schools in the store’s vicinity.
“There’s a bodega on every corner, but nothing that says we value education,” stressed Harris, who often closes her eyes while speaking, as if she were trying to envision a distant future. “I want our community to know that we have talent too.”
Although opening the store fulfilled a dream for Harris, it happened thanks to what could have been a nightmare. Her son Jared was badly injured in a car accident. The crash put Jared — or Divine as his friends like to call him — on disability, but it also gave him a large insurance settlement. He turned that money over to his mother, who combined it with her own savings, and found the sum to be just enough to open the store.
Asked why she chose to locate in the South Bronx when she could have opened the store in a more prosperous neighborhood, Harris offered a simple answer.
“This is my hood,” she exclaimed. “I used to take the 42 bus right over there. This is where I’m from. My heart is here.”
Like any new business, Books in the Hood faces many challenges, but some are unique to the neighborhood. There’s a methadone clinic just down the block, and its clients congregate on the street and in nearby businesses.
“Don’t let it get like McDonalds!” warned Steve Burns, who said the fast food restaurant had become a hangout for recovering drug addicts. Burns, 40, a regular customer with his eight-year-old son Kareem, complained that addicts were beginning to loiter in front of the bookstore, holding “meetings about God-knows-what.”
After shooing the men away, Jared Harris explained, “I think that’s why the cab people left.” The bookstore’s location was formerly the office of a cab company that paid its employees there. “When you got all that money around, you don’t want people like that around,” he said.
“You got to get hood with them!” advised Burns. “They don’t understand nothing else.”
But once inside the store, Burns quickly softened his tone. “It’s like you’ve invited me into your home,” he told Harris.
Harris was pleased that he liked the “old-timely southern feel” she wants the store to have. But for Burns it isn’t only the friendliness that brings him back again and again; it’s his son.
“He doesn’t want to go the game store; he wants to come over here,” said Burns, proud of Kareem, who he says is excelling in school.
Books in the Hood also faces a more mundane problem than congregating addicts: building a customer base large enough to pay the bills.
“There were two kids here but they left,” remarked Harris, when a visitor found no one attending one of the “Story Time” sessions the store holds from noon-2 p.m. on Saturdays. “Last month, we made just enough to pay the rent.”
One ingredient that Harris hopes can help turn the business into a success is popularity of what is becoming know as urban fiction, or street fiction as Harris likes to call it. Books in the Hood stocks many titles, including some that have gone mainstream, like Sister Souljah’s “Coldest Winter Ever” and Teri Woods’ “True to the Game.” The genre is characterized by African-American or Latino writers telling coming-of-age stories that take place in hostile urban environments.
“Urban fiction is up there with the rap game, as far as street sales,” proclaimed Nelson, a man who sells books from a table on the street and who has been helping Harris get her business started. “Everybody wants a piece, even Barnes & Noble got an urban fiction section,” continued Nelson, who asked that only his first name be published.
“The kids ain’t reading literature, but they reading urban fiction,” he continued. “You got guys who didn’t even finish high school writing books about sex, money, and drugs.”
Stephen A. Welles, the author of “Streets of Honor,” his tale of growing up on tough streets in the Bronx of the 1970s, drove from his home in upstate New York just to meet Harris in person. “We’re all trying to escape those dark allies of the streets,” said Welles of his novel.
“It’s more than just a book for me, just like how I know it’s more than just a store for her.”
In addition to urban fiction, readers browsing the store’s newly-built shelves could find children’s books like “Falling Up” by Shel Silverstein and a section filled with Dr. Seuss books; spiritual books, including the Quran; and best-sellers like Dan Brown’s controversial “The DaVinci Code.”
One genre Harris focuses on is self-help books. She is quick to parade titles like “Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys” by Jawanza Kunjufu and “Coaching for Fatherhood: Teaching Men New Life Roles” by Lewis Epstein. The store also sells many books that help people study for their GED.
Another market that Harris intends to tap is schools. As a teacher herself, she said she knows how hard it is to find teaching supplies in the area.
She may offer tutoring sessions for kids in grades K-5, and she plans to hold events like book fairs and get the school reading lists in advance in order to stock her shelves in time.
The idea of a section for teachers and students seemed to excite Nelson, who has worked in the book business for five years–two as a vendor–and always wanted to open a bookstore himself. He believes Books in the Hood is going to succeed.
“She’s going to do real good in that spot,” he said. “It’s not like she’s got any competition.”