Banned books find a home in Fresno at new store. Step inside Judging by the Cover
Banned books have found a home on the shelves of Fresno’s new independent bookstore.
Judging by the Cover celebrated its soft opening on Friday, November 1 at 1029 F St. in Fresno’s Chinatown. It’s part of a city-led initiative to bring more businesses to the neighborhood.
Judging by the Cover stocks a variety of books in English as well as Spanish, Punjabi, Mandarin and Vietnamese. There are even Greek and Armenian titles.
The walls of the 500-square-foot space are lined with a diverse collection of literature aimed at readers from all walks of life.
“(We are) just really trying to highlight the diversity of Fresno on the shelves,“ store co-owner Ashley Mireles-Guerrero said.
Mireles-Guerrero said it was very important for her and her husband and business partner, Carlos Guerrero, to include books for sale that had been banned, restricted or otherwise judged unfairly.
“Most of the books in here are books that would have been judged by the cover, or their author would have been judged by the cover,” Mireles-Guerrero said.
How did new Fresno bookstore start?
Judging by the Cover began life as a pop-up before becoming a brick-and-mortar store, according to Mireles-Guerrero.
“We’ve worked with Arte Americas. We’ve worked at the Pride festival. We did the pop-up for the Queer Housing Summit,” she said. “We’ve done pop-ups basically anywhere, anyone will have us.”
Those pop-ups, many of them themed, are reflected in the store’s collection of books, she said.
Mireles-Guerero said she and her husband have both worked in the publishing industry for more than a decade.
“We’ve been helping people find books for a while,” she said. “Finally, we kind of got fed up with waiting for someone to open a store like ours, so we just decided to do it ourselves.”
What can you find at Judging by the Cover?
At Judging by the Cover, you can find books written by local authors including Joseph Rio’s “Shadowboxing” and Gary Soto’s “Baseball in April and Other Stories,”
You can also find books by queer authors including “A Different Kind of Brave” by Lee Wind and “Last Night At The Telegraph Club” an award winning book by Malinda Lo.
“We focus on titles that are by queer and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) authors, as well as books that are not in English,” Mireles-Guerrero said.
In selecting a store format, “We’ve chosen to sprinkle them in” instead of separating such books into their own sections, she said.
Right now the book Mireles-Guerrero. is most excited to have at the bookstore is “Naming the Lost: The Fresno Poets,” edited by Christopher Buckley.
Published by Texas A&M University, the collection of interviews and essays focuses on “the community of poets first coming through Fresno, beginning in the early 1960s,” according to its official description.
How much do books cost?
Book prices at Judging by the Cover range from $5 to $20. Photography books are more expensive and cost about $75, according to Mireles-Guerrero.
The bookstore offers a 10% discount for teachers and book club members.
Silent book club helps local readers slow down
“We just get together and read for an hour,” Mireles-Guerrero said. “Because we tell everyone they can’t pick out their phones ... so it’s kind of a forced moment to slow down, read your book, catch up.”
Mireles-Guerrero said she and her husband want to do local author signings and are working on a Saturday morning storytime for kids.
“We also want to do an event where we get authors who are self-published in to sell their books as gifts for the holidays,” she said.
What’s next for Chinatown business?
Mireles-Guerrero hopes her bookstore will become a staple of the Fresno culture and Chinatown.
“The goal is to grow as much as we can in this space,” she said. “We really do want to bring people out into Chinatown. Chinatown has been somewhere that we’ve enjoyed spending time in, and we want to convince people to actually come down here.”
“Our first goal was within a year to open a brick-and-mortar. So we’re there now,” she said. “We’re gonna try to grow as much as we can here, fill all the walls with books and then figure out what’s next.
This story was originally published November 11, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
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