Inspired by Octavia Butler’s Parable novels, the hybrid bookstore/cultural center Parable in Tacoma, Wash., aims to be a community gathering space. Twins LaKecia Farmer and Le’Ecia Farmer, with their cousin Deatria “Dee Dee” Williams, opened the shop in August. Following what LaKecia calls a “learn-as-you-go” approach, they combined their skills, crowdfunded, and sought business mentorship before deciding their new enterprise would focus on books by, for, and about members of the LGBTQ and BIPOC communities, as well as women and nonbinary people. LaKecia said Parable is “a place for people to be themselves.”
Parable has a 50/50 mix of new and used titles, with Ingram as its primary distributor. At the very start, LaKecia said, “the Bookshop.org site helped a lot when we couldn’t ship books fast enough.” The women quickly added items when people came in looking for records or candles and ended up buying a book. “Books are part of a larger picture,” she added.
Bestsellers include the work of Octavia Butler (naturally), James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison, and present-day favorites like adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy, Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater, and Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous People’s History of the United States flies off the shelves, and popular children’s books—notably Innosanto Nagara’s A Is for Activist—are stacked under a homespun sign reading “Earthseed.”