The Only Black-Owned Bookstore in Wisconsin Is on a Tricycle (For Now)
The Niche Book Bar of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is the only Black-owned bookstore in the entire state. That isn’t the only unique thing about it, though: It’s currently located on the back of a big, blue tricycle.
The bookstore on wheels is owned (and pedaled) by Cetonia Weston-Roy, who also works as a behavioral technician for children with autism. Initially, Weston-Roy was hoping to open an actual storefront for her bookstore—and that’s still very much her goal—but those plans went out the window when the coronavirus pandemic hit.
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“The bookstore on wheels was my COVID solution,” Weston-Roy told Bicycling.
Weston got the idea after seeing an ice cream vendor on a bike with a similar setup. She went out and bought a used adult tricycle, and then had a local woodworker build a custom bookcase to fit on the back of it. Though it doesn’t quite look like it, Weston-Roy says she can carry close to 100 books within the bookcase’s compartments.
Weston-Roy takes her book bike out a few times a week (though less now than in the summer) primarily in the Bronzeville and Sherman Park neighborhoods, as well as to various outdoor markets and block parties. The best way to learn where she’ll be next is on her Facebook page.
The “niche” part of the bookstore’s name refers to the kind of books that Weston-Roy is primarily focused on curating: those written by Black authors and those that feature Black main characters. She’s aiming for roughly 90 percent of her books to meet one of those criteria.
The last Black-owned bookstore in Wisconsin was “The Reader’s Choice” which closed a few years ago after 28 years in business.
Weston-Roy, who has been an avid reader from a young age, cites her childhood as a big influence on her deciding to open her bookstore.
“I’ve always loved to read, but there was always this sort of disconnect of not fully being represented in the characters,” Weston-Roy said. “[I was] tired of only seeing myself in pain, in trauma, in struggle, and poverty, and really nothing else.”
Weston-Roy is an author herself and self-published a children’s book this past February called “The Misadventures of Tony Macaroni.” She’s hoping to develop her story as a series, releasing a book roughly once a year.
She’s also the founder of the Black Authors Collective, which originated as a pop-up event for Black authors to meet and sell their works, and as a way to connect to Black authors as she develops her bookstore. It was so well-received that she decided to form the collective, to continue serving as a hub of support for the Black literary community, both online and in person (once social distancing restrictions allow).
Weston-Roy is hoping to have a storefront by spring or summer of next year. There’s a kickstarter campaign to help raise the funds to make it happen. Her neighborhood of choice for her store is Bronzeville, a historically Black neighborhood in Milwaukee that’s described as “the primary African-American economic and social hub of its time” on the city government’s website.
“I just hope to make it normal for a community, where they can go somewhere and just find a book that reflects them and just kind of normalize that,” Weston-Roy said.
But even after the Niche Book Bar opens in a more traditional setting, Weston-Roy said she’d like to keep taking her bookstore on wheels out into the community.
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