The Noir Bookshop exudes warmth and comfort. As customers enter, there’s a stack of Jet magazines on the right, just below a pin board crammed with business cards and information about upcoming community events. On the left, there are children’s books and a chalkboard with the words “Black and Proud.” In the middle, there’s a couch, a chair, and, of course, books. The walls are either filled with family photos of owner Ymani Wince or still more books. There’s a poundcake on Wince’s desk. Anita Baker’s 1983 single “You’re the Best Thing Yet” is playing in the background.
It feels like you’re visiting Grandma’s house. The welcoming energy of the bookstore is intentional—it’s inspired by Wince’s paternal grandparents. During the Jim Crow era, her grandfather moved from Cleveland, Mississippi, to St. Louis, where he met her grandmother. There, the couple founded Lonnie’s Auto Body Repair on North Broadway, which they owned for nearly 26 years. Wince’s grandma taught her how to read.
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“If you have the privilege of experiencing a Black grandmother or Black grandparents, then you understand the shared experiences that we have with that,” says Wince. “From the little purse candies, which is something that we have in the store, to what her house smelled like, what Grandma smelled like. All of that—I wanted to preserve the nostalgia of my family.”
The Noir Bookshop is one of few Black-owned bookstores in St. Louis. Located at 2317 Cherokee, the store officially opened May 28 and sells both new and used books by Black and brown authors. Wince wants the store to be of the community and in it, which is why it’s dedicated to fostering the Black experience and will be a home for community events and space for Black and brown creators to promote their work.
“The Noir Bookshop is not just a bookstore,” Wince says. “You walk into a place like Barnes & Noble, and it’s very obvious it’s just a bookstore. The Noir Bookshop functions on three different pillars, which are education, inspiration, and community. Each of those pillars helps the entire cooperation function. Retail is just one function of TNB. I will also be hosting…other events in the community to help people with whatever information they want to know, free lunches, free dinner, things like that.”
Wince was inspired to open the bookshop in 2020, when she started collecting books by Black authors and sourced them on an Instagram account titled “The Little Noir Library.” Then, she read more about Black women across the country opening their own bookstores. Wince, age 28, wanted to bring that idea to St. Louis. Black-owned bookstores have long functioned as a source of political resistance and community building. In 1834, writer and abolitionist David Ruggles opened the nation’s first Black-owned bookstore in New York City while helping slaves escape through the Underground Railroad. Wince understands and affirms that legacy.
Plans for promoting The Noir Bookshop also coincided with the Wentzville School Board’s vote to remove Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye from every school library in the district, deeming it unsuitable for children. The ban was rescinded after students and the ACLU sued the district.
“There are so many books and so many resources now that cater to what the world has considered people to be described as ‘other,’” Wince says. “People are not going for the status quo anymore. They’re not allowing systems and institutions to tell them what they can and can’t absorb, what they can and can’t think, and what they can and can’t say. As a bookstore owner, I welcome that, because people are looking for something.”
Wince’s dedication to empowering her community through The Noir Bookshop is inspired by the work of the Black Panther Party. She recently read Power Hungry: Women of the Black Panther Party and Freedom Summer and Their Fight to Feed a Movement, in which she learned about the significant contributions that women in the movement provided for Black families and children. Wince, a South City resident, hopes to adapt that same model on the South Side. She wants to give back to the neighborhood that constantly sustains her creativity. That’s her long-term goal. Her short-term goal: partnering with Angela Davis for an event at the bookstore.
“Thinking about how people on the South Side have made me feel—having a walkable neighborhood to take my dog two doors down to get groomed or going to Elaine’s Sandwich Shop and her knowing my favorite sandwich—Cherokee Street feels like Sesame Street, and I’ve been saying that for years,” Wince says. “I want to be the book lady. I want to be in this store for years to come.”
The To-Read Pile
Ymani Wince recommends the following titles, all available at The Noir Bookshop.
Stacey’s Extraordinary Words by Stacey Abrams
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History by David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson
All About Love: New Visions by Bell Hooks
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi
Watermelon and Red Birds: A Cookbook for Juneteenth and Black Celebrations by Nicole A. Taylor
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that The Noir Bookshop was Cherokee Street’s only bookstore. SLM regrets the error.
