Anaheim finally has a bookstore that ‘feels like home’

The crowd inside the Untold Story in Anaheim was ready for open mic night to begin last week, but there was no way it would start on time.

Whenever owner Lizzette Barrios Gracián tried to approach the podium, someone pulled her away for a hug. A congrats. A recommendation. A thanks.

The bookstore opened last year in an industrial part of the city so isolated that 911 dispatchers couldn’t find it when Barrios Gracián called about a medical emergency. Though it quickly earned a loyal following for focusing on BIPOC books and allowing activists to meet there without having to buy anything, the location wasn’t working, and Barrios Gracián was ready to close what had been a longtime dream.

Then she found a better, if smaller, place in a strip mall near downtown, within walking distance of her home. The Untold Story reopened a few weeks ago, and this was the first open mic night at the new spot.

“Oh my god, what a difference location makes,” Barrios Gracián told me as people kept filing in on July 25. “They’re coming to hang out, they’re coming to buy, they’re coming to organize, they’re coming from across the country.”

Among the customers she talked to that day: Toby from Florida. Nick from Kentucky who lives in Utah. A group of teenage girls in town for a water polo tournament. Anton Diubenko of Ukraine, who was in Orange County to see a friend and told me he visits bookstores around the world.

“This one’s really nice,” Diubenko said. “If I was a local, I’d come here every week.”

Barrios Gracián finally reached the podium. She was 20 minutes late. No one cared.

“Thank you muchachos!” the 52-year-old said in a loud, warm tone that hinted at her day job as a history teacher at Gilbert High in Anaheim. “Bienvenidos to our new location of the Untold Story, Chapter 2! Your job tonight is to support, clap and give lots of love.”

Lizzette Barrios Gracián, owner of the Untold Story bookstore, is also a history teacher at Gilbert High School in Anaheim.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Over the next two hours, the audience snapped their fingers, applauded, hooted in approval or nodded as speakers poured out their proverbial hearts in English, Spanish and Nahuatl. Local political blogger Vern Nelson tickled out on his electric keyboard the Mexican children’s tune “El Ratón Vaquero” as adults and teens alike sang and clapped along. Every time someone went up to perform, Barrios Gracián sat in their seat, because all the others were occupied.

“The greatest success of this bookstore,” she said in closing, flashing a smile as bright as her gunmetal gray hair, “is uniting all of you.”

Although the night was officially over, no one left. They wanted to exult in the moment.

Vivian Lee, who organizes board game get-togethers at the bookstore through her role as community engagement coordinator for the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance, said that “welcoming spaces” can be hard to find in her native city.

“People like Liz are just so incredible,” said Lee, 30. “She’s game for anything that helps community.”

Paola Gutierrez teaches monthly bilingual poetry classes at the Untold Story. “When I first asked if she could sell my book, she said not just ‘Yes’ but ‘We will promote you and help you,’” the 47-year-old said. “How can I not say I’m free for whatever you need?”

She pointed at a massive couch and laughed. “Liz needs me to move this freakin’ thing again? Let’s do it!”

Barrios-Gracian, center, introduces poets during her bookstore’s open mic night last week.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

I visited Barrios Gracián the following day when things were chiller. The Untold Story’s design is bohemian Latinx. All the fixtures and artwork are donated, including bookshelves, massive mirrors and a bust of the Egyptian goddess Isis as well as a replica of the Titanic above the used fiction section. Insulation peeks out from sagging ceiling tiles. A stand next to the gift section offers free toiletries and canned and dried food.

“We’re going through hard times,” Barrios Gracián said as Argentine rock gods Soda Stereo played lightly from speakers. “I can’t give a lot, but I can give.”

How did she think open mic night went?

“It was very successful for our first time here,” she responded. “You never know if people will follow you when you move.”

A customer walked in.

“Hi, welcome!” Barrios Gracián exclaimed, the first of many times she would do that during our chat. “Don’t shy away, you don’t have to buy!”

Born in Guadalajara, Barrios Gracián came to Anaheim with her parents in the 1980s without papers, eventually legalizing through the 1986 amnesty. A bookworm from a young age, she found her “safe space” as a teen and young adult in long-gone bookstores such as Book Baron in Anaheim (“I loved how disorganized it was”) and the bilingual Librería Martínez in Santa Ana.

When the latter closed in 2016, Barrios Gracián vowed to open a version of it when her daughters were older. In 2021, she launched the Untold Story as a website and a pop-up, aiming to eventually open a storefront in her hometown.

“Anaheim is nothing but breweries,” she said. “That’s the teacher in me. There’s nothing cultural for our youth — they have to go to Santa Ana to find it, while [Anaheim] lets gentrification go crazy.”

Rent proved prohibitive at most spaces. At others, prospective landlords would offer a lease only if the Untold Story dropped its books on critical race theory, which she refused to do.

“Those are the untold stories,” Barrios Gracián said. “Anaheim needs to hear them. Everyone needs to hear them.”

She greeted Benjamin Smith Jr. of Riverside, who had read the previous night and was returning now with his poetry books.

“I can sell them, but we should have an event just for you, because people like to meet the author of the book they might buy,” Barrios Gracián told Smith. He beamed.

Hailey Sotelo, 15, a student at Savanna High School in Anaheim, reads her poetry during the Untold Story’s open mic night.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“Liz gives people chances,” Smith, 68, told me. “I’m no one famous, but look at me here now.”

Barrios Gracián is keeping her job at Gilbert High, where she also heads the continuation school’s teen parent support program. At the Untold Story, she wants to host more author signings and launch an oral history project for students to record the stories of Anaheim’s Latino elders.

“We’re in a crucial moment where our stories must be told from the past,” she said. “Ellos sobrevivieron, también nosotros [They survived, we can as well]. It brings hope.”

One thing I suggested she work on is the business side. The books are ridiculously affordable — used copies of a J. Robert Oppenheimer biography and a book about the rise of Nazism in L.A. before World War II set me back $11. Barrios Gracián’s training consisted of a free entrepreneur course through the city of Anaheim, a video by the American Booksellers Assn., talking to other bookstore owners and Googling “how to open a bookstore.”

She laughed.

“I tell my students we learn by falling and then getting back up,” she said. “If I can make money, it would be great, but that’s not the point here. Might sound crazy for business people, right?”

The numbers are thankfully going “in the right direction,” said the Untold Story’s manager, Magda Borbon. Barrios Gracián was one of her favorite teachers at Katella High School, “so now it’s time to pay it back” by working at the store, she said.

Like me and too many other Anaheimers, Borbon moved to Santa Ana “because I didn’t see myself culturally in Anaheim. Now I do.”

Barrios Gracián excused herself to greet more customers. I walked over to a table where a group of women were painting book covers as part of their book club. It was everyone’s first time at the Untold Story.

“This is very much an extension of Liz,” said Angela Stecher, who has worked with Barrios Gracián before. “She’s been talking about doing something like this for years, and it’s wonderful to see her do it.”

“This is like something that you’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 feel like you can’t touch anything because everything is so neat,” said Liliana Mora. She waved around the room as more people streamed in. “Here, it feels like home.”