Consider This from NPR - Iconic Bookstore Closes, But The Community It Helped Build Lives On

Episode Date: May 2, 2023

Eastwind Books in Berkeley, California, has closed its doors. It was one of the oldest Asian-American bookstores in the country. For decades, the store functioned as a cultural hub, not only for the Asian-American community, but for a variety of marginalized groups.NPR's Ailsa Chang spoke with co-owner Harvey Dong about the bookstore's history and legacy. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. We're going to take you now into a tiny bookstore in Berkeley, California, a set of pale yellow walls and chipped tile floors that has for decades anchored the Asian American community here. Hello, hello. Listen how echoey it sounds in here.

Does it sound too echoey to you right now? Yeah, it is a little echoey. It's an empty room now. All the shelves are gone. Right there, as soon as you come in the door, a person would greet the customers. Just days ago, Eastwind Books of Berkeley closed its doors for the final time. The owners, Harvey Dong and his wife Beatrice, are now in their 70s, and they decided it was just time to close up shop. On your right would be literature from China, Japan, Philippines, social movements, activism.

They're so used to seeing this place packed with books, but, you know, East Wind was also often packed with people. It gave them a place to connect, a place to belong. At an event in Berkeley last week, scholars and writers Janet Stickman, Dixon Lamb, and Keith Feldman shared their memories. East Wind Books was the only bookstore that always made it clear to me there was a place for me as a Black Athena author. It made me feel Asian American. It made me proud to be Asian American. You know, I had something to contribute here. And this is my place too. It's such a powerful reminder. The bookstore has been not simply or solely as a container of something, but as a real catalyst for building the worlds we

want to see. Consider this. East Wind was never just about the books. It was an idea. And that idea to build a bookstore and in doing so to build a community, that started long before the Dons ever owned this particular storefront in Berkeley. We'll hear that origin story after the break. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Tuesday, May 2nd. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. Harvey and Beatrice Dong's story goes back to the end of the 1960s when they joined a wave of student-led protests to establish an ethnic studies department at UC Berkeley. Across the bay in San Francisco's Manila town, they were also fighting for housing rights

for working-class Chinese and Filipino people. And it was there, in Manila town, that Harvey and nine friends each threw in $50 apiece to open a little shop called Everybody's Bookstore. It was right by Tino's Barbershop, where a quartet of Filipino men often jammed on their guitars. Nearby was the ever-popular Club Mandalay. You would hear music, but then sometimes the music might stop,

and then you might hear wine bottles hitting the floor or something, and there's just like a fight outside. Everybody's Bookstore was one of the country's first Asian-American bookstores, stocking literature from the People's Republic of China, leftist papers, and magazines from Hong Kong and Macau. Tong says the very idea of a store like this was radical at the time. There was always the threat of vandalism from anti-communist corners of the Chinese-American community. We had to put on the heavy plywood over the play glass. So you might have like four locks holding the plywood down. Wow.

Was that kind of a scary time? It was something that we learned to deal with. Everybody's bookstore endured for 10 years before closing in 1980. But a new gathering place for Asian American literature emerged, a small chain called East Wind Books and Arts. For years, Harvey and Beatrice were just customers there, but then in 1996, they took over the Berkeley store. They envisioned East Wind as a place that would build coalitions, not just within the Asian American community, but across all kinds of marginalized groups. So we actually transformed the whole focus of the bookstore from Chinese language, China topics, to more Asian American stories, Asian American history, and also ethnic studies, you know, African American experience, Native American experience.

You see, Harvey hoped that movements could learn from each other. He recalled this one event where a group of Southeast Asian refugee student organizers encountered Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panthers. I remember from that one meeting, I think the book was Black Against Empire. At that meeting, the Southeast Asian student group was doing some labor organizing, and they wanted to invite Bobby Seale to go and speak about the black experience. So they come here, they meet, they share, and then all of a sudden new connections are made. I think the Asian American community still has a ways to go as far as making alliances with other peoples of color,

other nationalities. It's important to fight for Asian American rights, but it has to be more of like a broader whole of society approach. Yeah. Well, when you first announced that this store, the brick and mortar version of the store was closing, what was the initial response you got? Some sadness. Some people thanked us. There was a lady who came. She was an immigrant woman from, I think, Hong Kong or China. Put her son in front of the store and took a picture of this little two-foot-tall kid

in front of the bookstore. How did it make you feel to watch that unfold? I was touched by it because I was just kind of... They wanted the future to remember this place. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I want you to just sit with that, Harvey. Yeah, it was kind of hard to comprehend, let's say. Yeah.

You know, because it's something you do every day. You did it for 27 years. And then finally, on the very last day, it all kind of comes to a certain point. Can I just say, Harvey, you and I have been talking this afternoon for quite some time and I've been asking you a series of questions to get you to brag about this heroic role that you have played in the history of this community in Asian American activism and I feel as we're talking I feel your humility your modesty and almost your your resistance to taking too much credit. What am I feeling there?

Well, I'd say that my own experience and commitment has always been related to the idea that it's important to do that, important to share ideas about ethnic studies or Asian American literature. Yeah, so there's nothing really to brag about, I don't think. You're just trying to get people to think and read and share. Although I did get picked to toss the ball at the A's game. Nice! For Asian Heritage Month.

That's something to brag about. I don't know why. You are not a good thrower? Well, I'm going to have to practice throwing a ball 60 feet. Do you have a training regimen? Well, I did throw a ball to my son's dog. You know, a tennis ball. So that'll be my practice.

I mean, I tried. This guy just will not boast about himself. That's Harvey. But lucky for me, there are plenty of people who will boast on his behalf, like Jade Lynn, a student at UC Berkeley who's been going to East Wind for years. It was the first time that I've encountered a place where you didn't have to dig into every crevice and search in every corner to find ethnic literature. You finally find one. It's a travel brochure to Asia.

Check out the lanterns, you know. And that was really beautiful for me. And I just want to say to Bea and Harvey that I hope that our younger generation can continue to carry the torch on this. And we're going to continue trying to open people's eyes to the necessity of including people's stories that reflect something closer to ourselves. So thank you so much. And as the stories of East Wind pour in, Harvey Dong wants to remind people those stories, they aren't eulogies. Today's not, it's not like a wake or a funeral. No one's died, you know.

But in fact, I think you could put it as this is like a beginning, you know. In fact, Harvey and Beatrice Dong say they will continue to curate the shelves of their bookstore, but online. And they hope the spirit of East Wind, this idea that there is power in community, that that will carry on. It's Consider This from NPR. Iman.org. Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org.