Salt Eaters Bookshop

ABOUT

The Salt Eaters Bookshop is an independent bookstore in Inglewood, Ca prioritizing books, comics, and zines by and about Black women, girls, femmes, and gender expansive people. ​Inspired by The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara, our shop is working to create a resting ground for us all, a place to come home.

MORE ABOUT US

The Salt Eaters Bookshop is an emerging independent, Black woman-owned bookstore based in Los Angeles prioritizing books by and about Black women and girls, femmes, and non-binary folks.

Bookstores have historically served as radical sites for the lost, the curious, the unseen, the wanderer–providing a dreamspace to reflect on the sum of who we are and who we can be. The Salt Eaters Bookshop, inspired by THE SALT EATERS by Toni Cade Bambara, aims to create a resting ground for us all, a place to come home.

In the words of ancestor Toni Cade Bambara, “The dream is real, my friends.” We hope you’ll join us in building the reality we need for the future we deserve. Stay tuned to our instagram for updates on what we’ve got planned for 2020 and 2021 and ways you can support.

A special thank you to @fayeorlove for designing our Alice Walker inspired logo pro-bono 🤍 Community is how we will win.

#thesalteaters #indiebookstores #blacklivesmatter #blackbooksmatter #supportblackbusiness

MEET ASHA GRANT

The big ‘n scary project is this: I’m opening up a bookshop.

Ever since I was small, safehouses for me have been libraries and independent bookstores. In indie bookstores, I had the room as a Black girl to be brave with my curiosities, affirmed by characters in places I knew and wanted to know, and comfortable knowing I was surrounded by folks who, too, loved the community built around a good story.

Through my work in launching + sustaining @thefreeblackwomenslibrary_la, I’ve been able to create mini literary safehouses for us all throughout the city, lugging tubs of books in my car and cramming bags of craft supplies in my trunk to community centered businesses and museums who hosted us for little to nothing and loved on us more than I can express. It’s been a beautiful, humbling journey. It is far from over.

Last fall, I began looking for spaces. I took the mirror photo in the 3rd space I viewed in Inglewood, Nov 2019. It marked my first step in claiming the vision – a loving and inviting bookshop dedicated to prioritizing books, comics, and zines by and about Black women, girls, femmes, and non-binary folks. A resting ground. A brave space. A Black place. A quiet nook to visit and read and print after school. Somewhere for the babies to have storytime. A place to nerd out in and be cool in and feel loved.

I been working on the vision – crunching the numbers, meeting with the realtor, planning with my contractor, designing mood boards, brainstorming programming, and praying. Nightly. Sometimes all throughout the day. It’s the dream I can’t shake and I’m rolling with it. It is sooo close.

The Salt Eaters, is derived from Toni Cade Bambara’s book THE SALT EATERS that provided my first in depth, and, admittedly, destabilizing look into the murky waters of mental health for folks that looked like me and expanded my understanding of wholeness (“no trifling matter”), interdependency, astrology, Black feminism, and beyond. Her unwavering principles and ethics guide both my personal and professional endeavors, leading me here.

I’m terrified but there are a few things I know: the future is Black and it is now. Thank you for reading any or all of this.