San Antonio’s West Side will soon have a Latino bookstore

GCAC Executive Director Cristina Balli says the store will quench the book desert that has plagued the area for generations. Mapping San Antonio bookstores shows the West and South Sides barren of books. The future of the South Side’s only store, Dead Tree Books, remains in limbo after owners Kenny and Melissa Johnson revealed in July that the business was struggling to survive at the current location. 

“It’s economics. The 78207 zip code is one of the poorest zip codes in San Antonio, with a long history of segregation, and economic segregation, that has shaped the forces to be what they are now,” Balli says. “The area is underserved in all aspects — food, transportation, infrastructure — not too long ago, there was a big flooding zone. Historically, there’s been a lot of neglect of the area. That’s the environment that we’ve been operating in.”

The bookstore is funded with the $839,000 the campus received as part of the 2012 city bond to renovate the Progreso Pharmacy building and add a community art gallery and gift shop. Balli says she added the bookstore concept when she joined in 2016, making it a five-year effort. 

While Balli oversees the larger vision, she tapped Tony Diaz as literary curator of the bookstore. His responsibilities include picking the books and developing programming to bridge the city’s literary ecosystem, involving fellow stores, the San Antonio Public Library and schools. Balli says Diaz has an extensive history in literary arts, working with authors, retail and a history in activism through his Librotraficante movement, which tackles censorship in Arizona. 

“There’s nobody better in the state to do this,” Bali adds. 

Diaz says his plans do not fall in line with a corporate agenda. He says it’s the industry’s sales-driven methods that fostered a literary desert to start with.

“If we follow those rules, we wouldn’t even open a bookstore,” he says. “Corporate English sentences our communities to investors. So we’re curating books based on community cultural capital, which is the legacy of the cultural center.”

While Diaz isn’t working to please corporate models, he says the business world will witness the benefit of investing in San Antonio’s culturally rich communities. He points to the state’s recent designation of the West Side as a cultural district of the city. 

“I have no doubt that this will be a destination and that we’ll be getting millions of dollars in sales in the next few years,” he says. 

For now, he’s working on developing bookstore offerings, from the shelves to experiences. Inaugural books include Dr. Roberto Cintli Rodriguez’s Writing 50 Years más o menos Amongst the Gringos, Max Baca’s Crossing Borders: My Journey in Music, and Diana Lopez’s picture book, Sing with Me: The Story of Selena Quintanilla. 

The 2022 author series will bring in “Chicano cornerstones,” Balli says. Names Diaz has on deck include 2022 Texas Poet Laureate Lupe Mendez, Baca, and more. 

Diaz’s vision for connecting schools include author visits to J.T. Brackenridge Academy, Tafolla Middle School and Lanier Middle School. He sees coordinating lesson plans and donations of books that reflect the culture and experiences of the students reading them. 

“I’m hoping that in a few years, there’s a whole generation of students that are just used to thinking that this is the way their literature courses work,” he says. “I would love to see high school students arguing that they should get their masters in prose or poetry.”

Balli and Diaz’s goal is for the bookstore to be a go-to destination on the GCAC campus, a place where visitors can immerse themselves in culture by browsing books, even when the plazas and theater aren’t active with performances or showings. 

“We want people to be accustomed to thinking, ‘Okay, when they go to the teatro, don’t forget to go to the Progreso (building) to pick up a book,” Diaz adds. 

The store is launching with a celebration steeped in Latino culture. Carmen Tafolla and Tomás Ybarra-Frausto will help christen the opening as what Balli calls “literary padrinos,” or godparents. The October 1 opening will also mark the national launch of Rodriguez’s aforementioned book.

The team says the opening “book bash” is symbolic of the “mish-mash of cultura” and community that San Antonio, and the rest of Texas, should expect of the store. 

“We have to work together to create a whole generation of family libraries,” Diaz adds. “When we do that, we all win. On that note, this is also built on the legacy of San Antonio, but it’s going to be a cornerstone for every city. This is not just going to be a center for San Antonio, this is where we’ll be showcasing writers from around the state.” 

The Guadalupe Cultural Art Center’s bookstore is located at 1300 Guadalupe Street. Once open, business hours will be noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.