Beatrice and Harvey Dong say farewell to their beloved Eastwind Books store.

Kori Suzuki for NPR

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Kori Suzuki for NPR

Beatrice and Harvey Dong say farewell to their beloved Eastwind Books store.

Kori Suzuki for NPR

The slender storefront on University Avenue that when housed Eastwind Books of Berkeley now sits empty. The bookshelves are gone, dusty shadows on the pale yellow partitions the one reminder of how tall they as soon as stood.

Co-owner Harvey Dong’s voice bounces off the partitions, as he recollects the titles that used to fill the store.

“The wall over there on the left, there was a section with social movements, activism, LGBTQ studies, also art books on origami, books on gardening, a religion section, philosophy section, Chinese medicine, martial arts,” he says.

For a long time, this retailer was an anchor for the Bay Area’s Asian American group. Now, Harvey and his spouse Beatrice, the shop’s co-owner, have determined to shut the store. They’re each of their 70s and have getting older mother and father to look after – and final weekend, they shut the doorways for the ultimate time.

While they’re used to seeing this place full of literature, Eastwind was by no means simply in regards to the books.

Attendees discover books on the market at a closing farewell occasion for Eastwind Books in April 27.

Kori Suzuki for NPR

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Attendees discover books on the market at a closing farewell occasion for Eastwind Books in April 27.

Kori Suzuki for NPR

The retailer has been a staple of the group for many years.

Kori Suzuki for NPR

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Kori Suzuki for NPR

The retailer has been a staple of the group for many years.

Kori Suzuki for NPR

“Books are what make revolution,” Beatrice says, and the couple’s imaginative and prescient after they purchased the shop in 1996 was to develop a spot “that used books and reading and knowledge to create unity, and to be able to bring people more and more into the movement to change the world.”

That revolutionary spirit grew from the couple’s early life within the late Nineteen Sixties, after they have been each combating to advance the rights of Asian Americans. Harvey was a part of the Third World Liberation Front strike, a coalition of Black, Latino, Native American and Asian American scholar teams that fought to determine an ethnic research program at UC Berkeley. Across the bay in San Francisco, they each protested for the housing rights of working class Chinese and Filipino folks in Manilatown.

It was there, in Manilatown, that Harvey and 9 others every threw in $50 to open a tiny store referred to as Everybody’s Bookstore. It was proper subsequent to Tino’s Barbershop, the place a band of elderly Filipino men would jam on their archtop guitars. Harvey recollects listening to their music via the partitions, together with the sounds of Hawaiian music, drifting from the jukebox at close by 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 then there’s, like, a fight outside,” he recollects with amusing.

Everybody’s Bookstore, seen right here within the early Seventies, was a pioneering power.

Steve Louie/Wei Min She and Asian Community Center images, AAS ARC 2015/3, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley.

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Steve Louie/Wei Min She and Asian Community Center images, AAS ARC 2015/3, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Everybody’s Bookstore, seen right here within the early Seventies, was a pioneering power.

Steve Louie/Wei Min She and Asian Community Center images, AAS ARC 2015/3, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley.

The literature on provide was totally different to the norms of the time.

Steve Louie/Wei Min She and Asian Community Center images, AAS ARC 2015/3, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley.

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Steve Louie/Wei Min She and Asian Community Center images, AAS ARC 2015/3, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley.

The literature on provide was totally different to the norms of the time.

Steve Louie/Wei Min She and Asian Community Center images, AAS ARC 2015/3, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Everybody’s Bookstore was one of many nation’s first Asian American bookstores, stocking literature from the People’s Republic of China, leftist papers, martial arts books and magazines from Hong Kong and Macau.

“We always felt uncomfortable when we went to mainstream bookstores,” Harvey says. “And you’re looking for Asian American books and they’re kind of blended in with sociology or history.”

Jeffrey Thomas Leong, a author and poet who labored behind the counter at Everybody’s Books, says curious passersby would usually peek in, due to the rarity of such a retailer on the time.

“We saw ourselves as trying to provide a place for an Asian American voice,” he says. “It was sort of defining our own space, trying to provide the kind of stories and literature that was unheard of before.”

Leong says the novelty of the shop, and the political leanings of among the books and periodicals it stocked, additionally drew consideration from anti-Communist circles of the Chinese American group.

“The bookstore was pretty radical because it sold publications from mainland China,” Leong says. “So we had to board up the windows every night just to make sure that people didn’t, you know, [do] damage and vandalism and stuff like that.”

Harvey (pictured on the entrance) takes half in a march for low-cost housing within the early Seventies.

Steve Louie/Wei Min She and Asian Community Center images, AAS ARC 2015/3, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley.

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Steve Louie/Wei Min She and Asian Community Center images, AAS ARC 2015/3, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Harvey (pictured on the entrance) takes half in a march for low-cost housing within the early Seventies.

Steve Louie/Wei Min She and Asian Community Center images, AAS ARC 2015/3, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Everybody’s Bookstore endured for 10 years earlier than closing in 1980. But across the similar time, a brand new gathering place for Asian American literature emerged – a small chain referred to as Eastwind Books and Arts. For years, Harvey and Beatrice have been simply clients there. And then in 1996, they took over the Berkeley location.

“We had the confidence that we could give it a try, at least for a couple of years. But it ended up being 27,” Harvey says.

They envisioned Eastwind Books as a spot that may construct coalitions, not simply inside the Asian American group, however throughout every kind of marginalized teams – to assist political actions be taught from one another and make new connections.

Harvey recollects one occasion specifically, at which a bunch of Southeast Asian refugee scholar activists met Black Panthers co-founder Bobby Seale. It was for the guide Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin.

“Not only did Josh and I show up and the place was packed, but Bobby Seale was there,” Martin recollects, “and my memory is that Bobby did most of the talking. But the conversation ranged widely.”

The refugee scholar group then invited Seale to talk at their very own occasions in regards to the Black expertise – an instance of the kinds of alliances Eastwind cultivated, Martin says. “Thinking about people of color politics, thinking about radical political coalitions, the bookstore and Bea and Harvey have been very, very essential.”

Harvey and Beatrice are planning to proceed to curate the cabinets of their bookstore on-line.

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Harvey and Beatrice are planning to proceed to curate the cabinets of their bookstore on-line.

Kori Suzuki for NPR

People mingled on the farewell occasion in April.

Kori Suzuki for NPR

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People mingled on the farewell occasion in April.

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“I think the Asian community still has a ways to go as far as making alliances with other peoples of color, other nationalities,” Harvey says. “It’s important to fight for Asian American rights and fight against violence against Asians. But it has to be more of a broader, whole of society approach.”

Last week, because the Dongs ready to lock up store for the ultimate time, students, writers, clients and staff gathered at a UC Berkeley occasion to thank them for his or her a long time of labor making a retailer whose affect transcended its partitions or the books upon its cabinets.

“It was a place that embraced the power of ethnic solidarity,” says the creator Janet Stickmon. “Eastwind Books was the only bookstore that always made it clear to me that in the world of Asian American literature, there was a place for me as a Blackapina author.”

Dickson Lam, a professor of English at Contra Costa College, says the shop was a refuge, a spot that related him to his Asian American id in a means that historical past classes by no means had.

“Growing up, I remember teachers talking in school about the railroad workers,” he says. “And even though I’m Chinese, I never felt a connection to that because that history felt so distant.”

Harvey joins Berkeleyside reporter Iris Kwok chortle for a reside session on the farewell occasion in April.

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Harvey joins Berkeleyside reporter Iris Kwok chortle for a reside session on the farewell occasion in April.

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Attendees reminisced and shared what the shop meant to them.

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Kori Suzuki for NPR

Attendees reminisced and shared what the shop meant to them.

Kori Suzuki for NPR

Lam says Harvey and Beatrice’s battle for Asian American rights within the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s felt totally different. And he says they made him really feel like he had a spot in that historical past and one thing of his personal to contribute.

“Without Harvey and Bea needing to sit me down to explain anything, just them being there, and the work that they did – it made me feel Asian American. And it made me proud to be Asian American.”

Jaide Lin, a UC Berkeley scholar, says she hopes a brand new era can “continue to carry the torch” that Harvey and Beatrice held excessive.

“We’re not going to let things stop here,” Lin says. “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.”

At the ultimate occasion contained in the now-empty store, hosted by the local paper Berkeleyside, Beatrice spoke to that future – recalling the greater than 100 younger individuals who had labored on the store via the a long time.

“We see our role as a springboard,” she says. “Some of our former staff are already volunteering to be the new face of our bookstore, they’ll be the ones that will be organizing our events. So there’s a bright future.”

A photograph of Harvey and worker Cheryl Truong, taken by Berkeleyside photographer Ximena Natera, is projected onto the wall on the farewell occasion.

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A photograph of Harvey and worker Cheryl Truong, taken by Berkeleyside photographer Ximena Natera, is projected onto the wall on the farewell occasion.

Kori Suzuki for NPR

She reminded attendees that she and Harvey would proceed to curate the cabinets of their bookstore – online. And amid the numerous tributes and congratulations and remembrances, Harvey felt compelled to remind everybody that their story, and the story of Eastwind Books of Berkeley, wasn’t a eulogy.

“Today is not like a wake or a funeral, you know,” he laughs. “No one’s died, you know … this is like a beginning.”