A Local Hero, Opening Big in Harlem
By CLYDE HABERMAN - NYT
LARA VILLAROSA was at her desk yesterday at 5 a.m., fully five hours before the start of business at her Hue-Man Bookstore and Café in Harlem. This was not her normal schedule, not by a long shot. But then, it was not a normal day.
Just wait till today. It could be downright weird.
If all goes as planned, Ms. Villarosa's store will be hit by the whirlwind known as the Bill Clinton book tour. It starts in the city today and spreads after tomorrow to the hinterlands (a New York euphemism for Los Angeles).
With a book like Mr. Clinton's "My Life," which is landing with a fury usually reserved for the likes of Harry Potter, you expect book-signing rituals at familiar shrines of commerce like Barnes & Noble and Borders. The former president commits no heresy in this regard. But come this evening, he will also take his selling campaign to the comparatively small Hue-Man store on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, just below 125th Street and a short stroll from where he has set up post-White House shop.
This unusual stop was enough to raise journalist eyebrows. It explained why Ms. Villarosa was in her office at 5 a.m. As the president and managing partner of Hue-Man, she had to get ready for early-morning television interviews.
"They wanted to know how we felt about Clinton coming," she said. "It's a very special occasion for us. We're an African-American specialty store. We are an independent African-American store, owned by four African-American women. What's the likelihood of something like this happening here?"
The Clinton book has ardent conservatives already foaming at the mouth. It has received body blows in the form of some devastating early reviews. ("Sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull" was Michiko Kakutani's verdict in this newspaper.) But the former president's popularity in black America endures. Clear evidence of that can be found at Hue-Man, which Ms. Villarosa and her partners opened two summers ago.
There, Mr. Clinton rocks. The store ordered 2,000 copies of "My Life." With a limit of one per customer, all had been sold in advance by Sunday. To ensure an orderly flow of people this evening, buyers received numbered tickets. They will be asked to line up in numerical order to pick up their signed copies.
Even knowing the book had sold out, dozens of Clinton admirers flocked to the store yesterday to put their names on a waiting list, in case extra copies might arrive. Their chances, Ms. Villarosa said, hovered somewhere between zero and zip.
Like anyone in business, she hopes that the Clinton phenomenon leads to a sustained interest in what she sells. After an event like this, she said, "How could you not know about us?"
For many years, she ran a book shop in Denver called the Hue-Man Experience, a play on words that surely you can figure out for yourself. Choosing to move to New York for family reasons, she sold the store a few years ago. She had not planned a new business. But there was "this hole in the wall" on Frederick Douglass Boulevard. Before she knew it, she was starting over.
The store is 4,000 square feet of brightly lit space. That includes the cafe, a necessity in an era of bookselling that has made contemplation and caffeination practically synonymous.
WHAT she provides the people of Harlem is "product and ambience," Ms. Villarosa said, and they in turn "embrace this store because of the pride they can feel here." It is a place, she said, dedicated to "speaking to our culture and speaking to our imagery."
Black-themed contemporary fiction and children's books are among her best sellers. So are biographies and cookbooks. Increasingly, "black chick lit" does well, she said. There is also a keen interest in works about life's seamier sides by pulp novelists like Donald Goines. After a while, readers of such books "cross over," Ms. Villarosa said. "They want to move on to something that gives them more. They've started reading, and they're interested."
The Clinton book offers an opportunity, she feels, to give the store a new jump start. It is why she asked the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, and Mr. Clinton's aides to agree to this evening's event. It is why she is willing to put up with the hype and the media overdrive and the general craziness that has accompanied the book.
"Think about it," she said. "We got this signing - an African-American store in Harlem, woman-owned. All I can say is, wow."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
