Duende District
Image courtesy of the store
How you describe a trip to Duende District depends on which coast of the country you find yourself.
Out west in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the pop-up lives in the very walkable neighborhood of Raynolds Addition, within a section of Red Planet Books & Comics. Upon entrance, you are immediately surrounded by radiant, vivid art on the walls from Indigenous creators that matches the brightly-colored storefront, and a vast array of comics by Black, brown, and Indigenous artists. Duende’s personal selections in their Decolonize Your Mind canon are displayed under the store’s sunny red-and-yellow signage inspired by the New Mexican flag.
Image credit: Sloane Dakota Tucker
On the East Coast, Duende takes up shop in Shopkeepers, a boutique and bubble tea store a few blocks from Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. All items inside are finely curated: neutral, minimalist clothing on wall racks; display tables of perfectly arranged home items; a front counter stocked with shrimp fries, flavorful instant Ramen, and other varied Asian snacks. The Duende District shelf fits right in, featuring an ever-changing selection of fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books. On the right day, if you’re lucky, a heavenly smell of freshly-brewed lavender Earl Grey London fog accompanies the scene.
“What will remain the same, regardless of location, is the sense of warmth, belonging, and celebration of Black and brown communities through beautiful books and conversation,” says Duende District owner Angela María Spring. “BIPOC people are always centered in every way.”
Duende District was born in late 2016, when Spring left her job as the sales floor manager at a large D.C. indie bookstore. “I had worked as a buyer or manager in bookstores in Albuquerque, New York, and D.C. for fifteen years, but throughout it all, I never felt truly seen by my employers or the books that lined our shelves,” she says. Coming to bookselling as a poet and journalist with friends in an expansive artistic community, Spring was particularly frustrated by the frequent passing over of ideas from Black and brown booksellers. She decided to see if she could help change that with a moveable bookstore space.
Image credit Washington Post
Getting Duende District off the ground, however, wasn’t so simple. “I had thousands of dollars in student debt and lived in one of the most expensive cities in the country,” Spring explains. She also lacked access to inherited capital (her mother immigrated to the U.S. as a child; her paternal grandfather was a coal miner). “But I do have a lot of white privilege, and I am lucky to be married to a partner who could largely support us at the time I took the plunge.”
With the help of crowdfunding, as well as support from local and nation-wide communities, Spring experimented with her first pop-up at the Artomatic Festival in D.C. She then continued to form other partnerships with organizations such as the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Latinx-owned Walls of Books, and the Anacostia Arts Center, alongside Black-owned D.C.-based bookshop MahoganyBooks.
“I think I did want a brick and mortar store in the beginning, because that’s what everyone was supposed to be working toward if they did something like a pop-up,” Spring says, “but it became increasingly clear that taking my concept and special curation to others who wanted to collaborate in new, exciting ways was what I really wanted.”
The decision to specifically establish more permanent pop-ups in Albuquerque and D.C. came from Spring and her partner’s personal ties to both cities (they are originally from New Mexico and lived in the capital district for more than a decade). “New Mexico and D.C. hold different, special parts of myself, and I don’t think I, or Duende, could be complete without each of them,” Spring says.
Image courtesy of the store
In early 2020, Spring she and her partner permanently relocated to New Mexico to raise their child near family. They planned to travel back and forth to D.C. frequently. The pandemic had other ideas, preventing in-person events and new pop-ups, both core parts of the business.
“The isolation has not been fun or mentally healthy,” she says, “but it’s forced me to think about the store in different ways.” Among these were a brand refresh in the summer of 2020, thanks to funding from a small grant, and a virtual series with The Word, which paired authors and literary community members for discussions centering Black, brown, and Indigenous people.
The pandemic also allowed Spring to focus on more initiatives that give back to her communities. In March 2021, Duende worked on an auction campaign with author R.O. Kwon to raise awareness of hate crimes against the AAPI community. Spring also co-founded the Duende-Word BIPOC Bookseller Awards as a way to raise money for, and celebrate, BIPOC booksellers.
“This industry is hardest on Black and brown people in every way, but especially monetarily,” Spring says. “I wish I could find more ways to give back!”
Image credit: Sloane Dakota Tucker
In addition to running Duende District, Spring has also served on the ABA (American Booksellers Association) board for the past four years, where she worked hard to enact major changes. These include incorporating a quorum of at least four BIPOC members, two of whom must be Black, into the organization’s bylaws (passed with great help of now-ABA President Christine Onorati of Word Bookstores).
“What has become clear is that just because you ‘allow’ someone a seat at the table doesn’t mean the work is done—it means the work is just beginning,” Spring says. “I was the first brown person to be on the board, so it was very lonely and very alienating in many ways. I literally cried when we were able to pass the changes to the bylaws. Now, we are finally beginning to reflect on that change, which means the conversation has, and will continue to, change and evolve.”
Spring was also part of the board that decided to remove First Amendment language from the ABA’s Ends Policies. While the policies still directly state that the organization is to strongly support and provide resources to members regarding free expression, they now also state that the organization’s work must be done through the lens of antiracism and equity. It was a two-year discussion, and has been divisive in the independent bookselling community since the announcement earlier this year.
Spring wishes that more time, energy, and resources from booksellers would be put into combatting true First Amendment violations across the country—from public school book bans to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill—as well as unfair discounting issues faced by indie stores, which hurt profits and wages in the face of ever-increasing rents. However, she also stands by the ABA’s decision.
“There are white people who believe they are the gatekeepers of ‘free expression’ and for them, that means absolute adherence to the First Amendment,” says Spring. “But the First Amendment protects hate speech, and many of those who are arguing that you cannot have free expression without it are operating on a double false premise: that anyone can say absolutely anything they want or sell anything they want without any social consequences and that we, as private businesses, are able to enforce a Constitutional Amendment in any way. This change means we can cease the performance of protecting free expression and actually protect both free expression and our most vulnerable members, of which there are more than ever before and growing.”
As for the future of Duende District, Spring is progressing into 2022 with balance in mind. “The pandemic has taught me the value of rest, of letting go, of perfection, of allowing Duende to breathe and be.” She is looking forward to The Word’s Margins Conference in Denver this August, organizing new pop-ups in New York, and prepping for the third annual BIPOC Booksellers Award, among whatever other opportunities come along.
“Duende belongs everywhere because every corner of this country has Black, brown, and Indigenous communities,” says Spring. “All I want is to put out the welcoming energy to anyone from those communities who love what Duende is and does, and work with them to build something new and special.”
Recommendations from the Bookseller
A Cup of Water Under My Bed by Daisy Hernandez
Spring has included this “wonderful memoir” as part of the Duende District canon. The lyrical, coming-of-age tale explores lessons Hernández learned about love, money, and race from the women in her Cuban-Colombian family, and how she discovered she was queer in this environment.
The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Coming in July from the author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree, Spring is already stoked to stock this memoir about the Contreras family’s secret, magical past, and how a trip to Colombia with her mother helped her trace their Indigenous and Spanish roots. Contreras uncovers a history that is simultaneously violent, rigid and deeply personal. “It is so breath-takingly beautiful,” says Spring. “Everyone must read it.”
This National Bestseller has been on Spring’s recommendation list for the past three years “because it is one of the tightest, best written novels I've ever read,” she says. Will falls for Phoebe upon transferring from Bible college to the prestigious Edwards University, but finds himself trying to escape his past once more when Phoebe is drawn into a secretive cult and helps commit a violent act in the name of faith.
Image courtesy of the store
