Shop Talk with Cheryl Lee of 44th & 3rd Bookseller
"We have so many people that walk into the store and they say they're just blown away by our collection."
Black and Brown bookstore owners do the important work of curating, amplifying, and preserving the rich through line of stories that feed us. They are vital members of our local and global communities. Where there is a movement, there are books. But who captures the stories of the booksellers themselves? In this column, SHOP TALK, profiling booksellers,
turns the lens onto Black and Brown bookstores around the world, honoring the journeys that bring them to our neighborhoods.Cheryl Lee is the co-founder and owner of 44th & 3rd Bookseller, a “family-owned, multicultural book and culture brand” in Atlanta, GA. Highlighting books by and about African Americans and those in the African diaspora, 44th & 3rd was established in 2017. You can follow the bookstore on Instagram.
What role has literature played in your life?
Oh, literature has been very important in my life. That's one reason why I wanted to start a bookstore, because growing up, it was one of the most important things in my life. I can't even tell you how many hours I was spending in our public library. I'm from Michigan, and I've always been fascinated about Black history. So, learning about different authors like Langston Hughes or Zora Neale Hurston and Ann Petry, just finding information was so wonderful for me that I wanted to be able to give that to other children, especially to learn and to know that we have this history.
Tell me about your journey to becoming a bookseller. What was the first thing you did when you and your family decided that you were “all in,” the first step that you made toward opening 44th and 3rd?
I'd always wanted to open a bookstore, even though I worked in corporate America for 40 years before [becoming a bookseller] full time. I had children in college, and we didn't want to [start the business] until we were absolutely sure it was something we could do.
One of the first steps that we took was to join the ABA, the American Booksellers Association. This was even before we had a physical bookstore, but we felt that the American Booksellers Association could provide us with a lot of information about bookstores that we didn't know or that we would not be able to have access to without being part of that organization. We were able to determine different contacts that we needed to make with publishers. We discovered that, for instance, Ingram, which is the largest book distributor in the country, would work really well for us because we were just starting out, and we were a very small bookstore, and we wanted to be able to get the types of books that we were looking for, which were primarily African American authors and authors of color. Ingram was very instrumental in even putting together a list for us of the types of books that they felt we should have in the store initially. That was extremely helpful.
I understand your graduate school thesis at Mercer University inspired your approach to bookselling. What did your research tell you about independent bookstores, and do those findings, now that you’re a bookseller, still hold true?
When I was in graduate school, it gave me the opportunity to research it. Since I was a business major, we were asked to choose a business that we would be interested in opening, and right away, an independent bookstore came to my mind. I did a lot of research, talked to a lot of bookstores — independent bookstores and some Black-owned bookstores, as well. At the time, the overwhelming consensus was that independent bookstores were not going to survive due to the big box bookstores, right? I wanted to find out for myself if that was really true, if that would be a real hindrance to an independent bookstore.
What I found was that that wasn't necessarily the truth, because big box bookstores really are not seen as part of the community. Independent bookstores are seen as part of the community, and the community is the one that supports it. The community is the one that wants it to survive, because they see the benefit in having that type of business in their neighborhood, especially Black-owned bookstores. So it really pretty much confirmed what I had felt before doing the research. That's what made me and my husband decide to pursue this.
You mentioned the disconnect between a big box store, which is a nationally recognized corporation, that often does not have the same personal touch as indie and small bookstores do. How has the local Atlanta community encountered or embraced 44th and 3rd?
We feel that they've embraced us tremendously. We've had so much support from the community, and we continue to get that support. We were in Little Five Points inside Moods Music.
Then, at the end of 2019, we got the opportunity to move into the space that we have now, which is right near the Atlanta University Center. So we thought this was the most perfect opportunity we could think of to be near Morehouse and Spelman and Clark Atlanta. We've been here three years, and we opened during covid, but we were fortunate enough to have an online store as well, which did fantastic business during covid, so that helped us along.
And being at the AU Center, we have contacts with the students. The students love us. All our employees, except for maybe two, are from the AU Center. So we make it a point to hire students, and we get students all the time asking if we're hiring because they've heard so many good things about the store.
Cheryl Lee hosting Vice Presidential Nominee Tim Walz at 44th and 3rd.
The tagline at 44th and 3rd is “life, literature and legacy.” What legacy would you like your bookstore to establish and leave behind in the Atlanta area and beyond?
The legacy that we would like to leave behind is that we created this environment where you could come into our store and find books about our people—and about other people of color as well—but mostly African Americans or people from the African diaspora, and find literature that you would not find any place else. We have so many people that walk into the store and they say they're just blown away by our collection, because you can't find some of the books we have in the store. One book is Ain't I an Anthropologist: Zora Neale Hurston Beyond the Literary Icon [by Jennifer L. Freeman Marshall]. This is a great book. That’s definitely one of the books when people come in, they say, “What is this?” because a lot of people aren’t aware that [Zora Neale Hurston] was an anthropologist.
Can you tell me about the most challenging aspects of owning a bookstore?
One of the most challenging [aspects] is dealing with the publishers. And what I mean by that is just making sure that they are looking out for your best interest, as much as they may be looking out for other independent bookstores, because we are a specialty bookstore. We only sell books by and about African Americans, and authors from the African diaspora, so we've been very vocal in making sure that that is something that they support, and also working with them about banned books.
I'm not saying that it's something bad. It's just a challenge, and it's something that, as a bookseller, you need to be aware of, because you need to have publisher support in order to get the events that you want to have, and authors. In order to get the kind of books that you want to have in your store, they have to keep you aware of what they have available.
From a bookseller’s point of view, did you all receive a part of that boon and interest in Black writers that began in the publishing industry in 2020, and do you see a receding of that commitment or does it seem as if they're continuing their commitment to working with Black booksellers?
I think they do seem to have a commitment to Black bookstores, and being able to showcase Black authors. I'm not saying that it's perfect: they still have a lot that they need to do to support diversity and authors of color, but I think they are making an effort. As Black booksellers, we have to challenge them constantly and make sure that they're doing what they should be doing. I don't think we can get comfortable or lax in what they're doing now, because it's something that we have to continually shine the light on.
Tell me about a book, recent or all-time favorite, that lives in your head rent-free.
One that stays in my mind all the time is Toni Morrison's Beloved. When I read that book, it blew me away, totally, and it was one of the first books that I had read by her. I had read The Bluest Eye, and that, too, was awesome, but Beloved is just a book that I constantly recommend to people. That is one that stays with me always.
One of the books that I just read a few months ago is Ours by Philip B Williams. That book is amazing and puts me in the mind of Toni Morrison. He brought the history of our people together and connected it to what’s going on now.
What’s on the horizon for you and your bookstore in the coming months or year? What are you looking forward to?
We just got a grant. We are so excited, because it's going to give us a lot of flexibility to do some things we've been wanting to do: more involvement in the community, bringing in more authors, reaching out to certain authors. Say, for instance, like Ishmael Reed, he doesn't do tours. You know, reaching out to those kinds of authors and bringing them in, where we can give the younger people the opportunity to see these types of authors. Some of you younger authors, you stand on their shoulders.
We want to do some outreach with literacy for younger children, and not just young children, but children in particular. We just found out about the grant, so we'll be putting that type of thing in place. But, we're really excited about the opportunity that we're going to have with this grant to do more that type of work, reaching out to authors, reaching out more to the community, and seeing what else it is out there that we can do.
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