These Women Are Solving the Bronx's Literary Crisis
At one point, literary behemoths like Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Mary Higgins Clark, and James Baldwin all called the Bronx home. But few people recognize the rich history of New York City’s northernmost borough. The narrative is more often centered on poverty and limited access to healthy foods, equitable health care, and education. Another flaw? The borough is currently in a literary crisis—one that two women are determined to fix.
In 2016, the Bronx said goodbye to its only brick-and-mortar bookstore. Despite an online petition signed by ten thousand locals, the Bay Plaza Barnes & Noble closed its doors, creating an immediate need for a gathering space where the bibliophiles among the community’s nearly 1.5 million residents could exchange ideas. This obvious lack of resources is what inspired Noëlle Santos, who viewed the retailer’s now-shuttered location as a sanctuary, to spring into action.
According to the short film 1.5 Million, 70 percent of third grade students in the South Bronx don't meet their reading benchmarks, increasing their likelihood of dropping out of high school and remaining in poverty.
“I came across a petition on Facebook saying that the Barnes & Noble in Co-Op City was in jeopardy of closing because the landlord didn't want to renew the lease. I signed it and got some friends to do so too, but I didn’t feel better,” Santos, a human relations manager turned independent bookstore owner, tells OprahMag.com. While the impact of the petition was initially tough to measure, she did know one thing: the Bronx needed another bookstore.
Growing up, Santos equated her success to just how far she could get away from the Bronx. “You’re going to get your education and ‘get out of the hood,’” she remembers thinking. That mentality changed when she realized just how influential her community was to her upbringing.
“Because reading was such a big part of my life, that was what it took to just stop me in my tracks and say, ‘You’re a coward, Noëlle, if you leave your borough in no better condition than you found it.”
That's when The Lit. Bar was born. Almost four years after the Barnes & Noble sold its last bestseller, Santos is now weeks away from opening her own indie bookshop in the borough’s Mott Haven district. To get the bar off the ground, she volunteered at local bookstores like Word Up, Greenlight, and Housing Works to better understand the dynamics of running a book business.
Serendipitously, a classmate she met during a week-long course called “Owning a Bookstore” encouraged her to apply for the New York Public Library’s New York StartUP! Business Plan Competition. The 31-year-old entrepreneur earned a second-place finish out of 350 contestants, which got her a $7,500 cash prize plus press coverage and the tools to launch a new website to promote her journey. She took the crowdfunding route, raising $154,546 via Indiegogo in March 2017 and later signing the lease for 131 Alexander Avenue—her store’s soon-to-open address.
40 percent of children in the South Bronx live beneath the poverty line, which makes a child 13 times less likely to complete high school on time. As of 2016, only 56 percent of high school graduates in the Bronx are prepared for college, according to 1.5 Million.
Santos, who identifies as Afro-Puerto Rican, wants residents to see themselves in her space. The latest addition is a 14-foot mural of a young Afro-Latina girl created by Bronx artist Andre Trenier. A fundamental part of her business, she says, will be supporting the work of locally-bred artists and authors. “We’re a bookstore that reflects the community that we operate in,” she says. “We have different interests, and just because we’re Black and mostly Latinx, that does not mean we don’t want windows and doors to other cultures.”
The vision of a more inclusive future is precisely what inspired a fellow book loving Bronx resident, Saraciea Fennell, to also want to change the face of the Bronx’s literary community. A borough native, she found it challenging to access books growing up, relying only on street vendors or libraries when she could get there. As a 29-year-old publicist for Tor Books, she recognized how hard it is to encourage authors to pay visits uptown. “The more and more I traveled outside of the borough, the more and more I found myself asking, Why doesn’t the Bronx have this?” she says.
As a child who was in the foster care system between the ages of 8 and 12, Fennell turned to books as a distraction. “I don’t want to say they were my saving grace, but it was a nice way to escape because you’re living with strangers, you’re not around family, so it was like, ‘I’m going to go into this room, sit down, read, and pretend none of this is happening to me,” she says, citing Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach as a childhood favorite. “That’s how I fell in love with reading and words.”
She and her family also benefited from her mastery of reading. Fennell recalls sitting with her aunt, an immigrant from Honduras, after school and translating important documents she received in the mail. And when she began living with her mother at age 13, oral storytelling left an imprint. “My mom was a huge storyteller,” she says.
Now mom to an 8-year-old son, the Afro-Latina publishing dynamo is ready to figuratively open the pages for Bronxites young and old. To do so, she founded The Bronx Book Festival, a literary event for people of all ages that attracted 36 industry titans last May, including authors like Elizabeth Acevedo (The Poet X) and Daniel José Older (Salsa Nocturna), and illustrators such as Vashti Harrison (Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History) and Eric Velasquez (Schomburh: The Man Who Built a Library). “This will be a festival to help promote literacy and foster a love of reading in the Bronx,” she says proudly.
But there are more chapters in this duo's Bronx tale.
Fennel is responsible for launching The Bronx Is Reading, a literacy program connected to her festival which secures free books and author-student meetings for children and teenagers in Title 1 schools like the one she attended. In less than 30 days, her Kickstarter for the project generated $35,948 and with the help of colleagues at publishing houses like HarperCollins, Scholastic, and Penguin Random House, she’s given away 600 books to date.
Her community has responded. In addition to receiving the support of the Mayor’s Office, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Education, as well as many agents, authors, editors, and publicists, she also found a helping hand in another Bronx native with a love for words: Santos.
Fennell first contacted Santos after she announced her plans for The Lit. Bar several years ago, expressing excitement over a new real-life literary institution. “We had to partner together. Two Black Latinas from the Bronx are doing it!” she says.
Later this month, Fennell will host the Bronx’s first-ever literary crawl (of course, The Lit. Bar is one of the many stops), and she has 2019 plans for a writer’s retreat and conference. She’s also started to scour the borough in search of the perfect spot for her ultimate dream: a children’s bookstore.
For Santos, the next step is to shift the perception of what today’s reader looks like. “When people think of a reader, they don’t think of Noëlle Santos from Soundview,” she says. “This is so much bigger than a bookstore. My story shows that we have the power to change things.”
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