The group contained in the Untold Story in Anaheim was prepared for open mic evening to start final week, however there was no means it will begin on time.

Each time proprietor Lizzette Barrios Gracián tried to method the rostrum, somebody pulled her away for a hug. A congrats. A suggestion. A thanks.

The bookstore opened final yr in an industrial a part of the town so remoted that 911 dispatchers couldn’t discover it when Barrios Gracián referred to as a few medical emergency. Although it shortly earned a loyal following for specializing in BIPOC books and permitting activists to fulfill there with out having to purchase something, the situation wasn’t working, and Barrios Gracián was prepared to shut what had been a longtime dream.

Then she discovered a greater, if smaller, place in a strip mall close to downtown, inside strolling distance of her dwelling. The Untold Story reopened just a few weeks in the past, and this was the primary open mic evening on the new spot.

“Oh my god, what a distinction location makes,” Barrios Gracián instructed me as folks stored submitting in on July 25. “They’re coming to hang around, they’re coming to purchase, they’re coming to prepare, they’re coming from throughout the nation.”

Among the many clients she talked to that day: Toby from Florida. Nick from Kentucky who lives in Utah. A bunch of teenage women on the town for a water polo event. Anton Diubenko of Ukraine, who was in Orange County to see a pal and instructed me he visits bookstores around the globe.

“This one’s very nice,” Diubenko mentioned. “If I used to be an area, I’d come right here each week.”

Barrios Gracián lastly reached the rostrum. She was 20 minutes late. Nobody cared.

“Thanks muchachos!” the 52-year-old mentioned in a loud, heat tone that hinted at her day job as a historical past trainer at Gilbert Excessive in Anaheim. “Bienvenidos to our new location of the Untold Story, Chapter 2! Your job tonight is to assist, clap and provides a number of love.”

Lizzette Barrios Gracián, proprietor of the Untold Story bookstore, can be a historical past trainer at Gilbert Excessive College in Anaheim.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Instances)

Over the following two hours, the viewers snapped their fingers, applauded, hooted in approval or nodded as audio system poured out their proverbial hearts in English, Spanish and Nahuatl. Local political blogger Vern Nelson tickled out on his electrical keyboard the Mexican kids’s tune “El Ratón Vaquero” as adults and youths alike sang and clapped alongside. Each time somebody went as much as carry out, Barrios Gracián sat of their seat, as a result of all of the others have been occupied.

“The best success of this bookstore,” she mentioned in closing, flashing a smile as vivid as her gunmetal grey hair, “is uniting all of you.”

Though the evening was formally over, nobody left. They wished to exult within the second.

Vivian Lee, who organizes board recreation get-togethers on the bookstore by her function as group engagement coordinator for the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Neighborhood Alliance, mentioned that “welcoming areas” will be laborious to seek out in her native metropolis.

“Folks like Liz are simply so unbelievable,” mentioned Lee, 30. “She’s recreation for something that helps group.”

Paola Gutierrez teaches month-to-month bilingual poetry lessons on the Untold Story. “Once I first requested if she may promote my guide, she mentioned not simply ‘Sure’ however ‘We’ll promote you and allow you to,’” the 47-year-old mentioned. “How can I not say I’m free for no matter you want?”

She pointed at a large sofa and laughed. “Liz wants me to maneuver this freakin’ factor once more? Let’s do it!”

Barrios-Gracian, middle, introduces poets throughout her bookstore’s open mic evening final week.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Instances)

I visited Barrios Gracián the next day when issues have been chiller. The Untold Story’s design is bohemian Latinx. All of the fixtures and paintings are donated, together with bookshelves, large mirrors and a bust of the Egyptian goddess Isis in addition to a reproduction of the Titanic above the used fiction part. Insulation peeks out from sagging ceiling tiles. A stand subsequent to the present part provides free toiletries and canned and dried meals.

“We’re going by laborious occasions,” Barrios Gracián mentioned as Argentine rock gods Soda Stereo performed calmly from audio system. “I can’t give loads, however I can provide.”

How did she assume open mic evening went?

“It was very profitable for our first time right here,” she responded. “You by no means know if folks will observe you whenever you transfer.”

A buyer walked in.

“Hello, welcome!” Barrios Gracián exclaimed, the primary of many occasions she would do that in our chat. “Don’t draw back, you don’t have to purchase!”

Born in Guadalajara, Barrios Gracián got here to Anaheim together with her dad and mom within the Eighties with out papers, ultimately legalizing by the 1986 amnesty. A bookworm from a younger age, she discovered her “secure area” as a teen and younger grownup in long-gone bookstores corresponding to Book Baron in Anaheim (“I liked how disorganized it was”) and the bilingual Librería Martínez in Santa Ana.

When the latter closed in 2016, Barrios Gracián vowed to open a model of it when her daughters have been older. In 2021, she launched the Untold Story as an internet site and a pop-up, aiming to ultimately open a storefront in her hometown.

“Anaheim is nothing however breweries,” she mentioned. “That’s the trainer in me. There’s nothing cultural for our youth — they must go to Santa Ana to seek out it, whereas [Anaheim] lets gentrification go loopy.”

Lease proved prohibitive at most areas. At others, potential landlords would provide a lease provided that the Untold Story dropped its books on crucial race principle, which she refused to do.

“These are the untold tales,” Barrios Gracián mentioned. “Anaheim wants to listen to them. Everybody wants to listen to them.”

She greeted Benjamin Smith Jr. of Riverside, who had learn the earlier evening and was returning now along with his poetry books.

“I can promote them, however we should always have an occasion only for you, as a result of folks like to fulfill the creator of the guide they could purchase,” Barrios Gracián instructed Smith. He beamed.

Hailey Sotelo, 15, a pupil at Savanna Excessive College in Anaheim, reads her poetry through the Untold Story’s open mic evening.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Instances)

“Liz provides folks probabilities,” Smith, 68, instructed me. “I’m nobody well-known, however take a look at me right here now.”

Barrios Gracián is conserving her job at Gilbert Excessive, the place she additionally heads the continuation college’s teen mother or father assist program. On the Untold Story, she needs to host extra creator signings and launch an oral historical past undertaking for college students to document the tales of Anaheim’s Latino elders.

“We’re in an important second the place our tales should be instructed from the previous,” she mentioned. “Ellos sobrevivieron, también nosotros [They survived, we can as well]. It brings hope.”

One factor I advised she work on is the enterprise facet. The books are ridiculously reasonably priced — used copies of a J. Robert Oppenheimer biography and a guide about the rise of Nazism in L.A. before World War II set me again $11. Barrios Gracián’s coaching consisted of a free entrepreneur course by the town of Anaheim, a video by the American Booksellers Assn., speaking to different bookstore house owners and Googling “the best way to open a bookstore.”

She laughed.

“I inform my college students we study by falling after which getting again up,” she mentioned. “If I can become profitable, it will be nice, however that’s not the purpose right here. May sound loopy for enterprise folks, proper?”

The numbers are fortunately going “in the appropriate path,” mentioned the Untold Story’s supervisor, Magda Borbon. Barrios Gracián was certainly one of her favourite lecturers at Katella Excessive College, “so now it’s time to pay it again” by working on the retailer, she mentioned.

Like me and too many different Anaheimers, Borbon moved to Santa Ana “as a result of I didn’t see myself culturally in Anaheim. Now I do.”

Barrios Gracián excused herself to greet extra clients. I walked over to a desk the place a gaggle of ladies have been portray guide covers as a part of their guide membership. It was everybody’s first time on the Untold Story.

“That is very a lot an extension of Liz,” mentioned Angela Stecher, who has labored with Barrios Gracián earlier than. “She’s been speaking about doing one thing like this for years, and it’s fantastic to see her do it.”

“That is like one thing that you simply’d see in San Francisco,” added Maria Zacarias, who grew up in Anaheim and now lives in Santa Ana.

“You go to a bookstore, you are feeling like you may’t contact something as a result of every thing is so neat,” mentioned Liliana Mora. She waved across the room as extra folks streamed in. “Right here, it looks like dwelling.”