At the bottom of the 51st Street Station on the Green Line in Bronzeville are a number of colorfully painted shipping containers arranged to form the Boxville Market.
Nestled into one of the containers is Da Book Joint, a bookstore focused on stories of Black characters written by Black authors. The eight-foot-long container is lined with shelves of books and small reading nooks. The mother-daughter duo that owns the store is Verlean Singletary and Courtney Woods.
Singletary opened Da Book Joint in May of 2007. As a dedicated reader, she was excited to finally read books about Black characters and wanted to share them with her community.
“A lot of the times I was reading books about people who their situations or environment, it didn’t relate to me,” Singletary said. “It was interesting and I liked reading about it, but ... I was detached. So, when I did discover books about people like me .. I felt more involved in the story, more intertwined in everything that I was reading.”
From 2007 to 2009, Singletary sold books and hosted author readings in her first Bronzeville location. Then Da Book Joint lost its physical store and moved completely
online. That allowed her to continue selling books and reaching people in the community without a physical location.
Singletary has also been using social media for the shop since it opened, but has never necessarily been happy about it. “They dragged me kicking and screaming to social media in ‘07 and I hated it because I just didn’t relate to it,” she says.
Courtney Woods is also a reader, like her mother. But they are extremely different in terms of how much they value digital marketing and social media.
Woods had another small business in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic and became well-versed in operating a professional social media page. Since there were little to no opportunities to do face-to-face marketing, she had to make sure her online presence was strong. Woods began helping her mother at Da Book Joint in 2021.
“I knew when coming on board with the bookstore and everything that social media was going to have to be an aspect of our business because so many people see community on social media when they can’t find community immediately around them,” Woods says.
The social media page for Da Book Joint has drawn in customers from around the country who seek a unique kind of bookstore. Although the media attention took off in the midst of the pandemic, Woods and Singletary had to cancel all in-person events which generated most of their sales.
Singletary says this drop in their sales happened around the same time as the Black Lives Matter movement started a resurgence of people supporting Black companies and stores. “Black bookstores, as that cornerstone and safe space and history storytellers, we were kind of right in the middle of that,” she says.
Companies like Microsoft reached out to Da Book Joint and multiple media outlets invited Singletary to appear on radio shows and podcasts. Within the same year, they both realized that they needed physical space for people in the community to find them and they landed at Boxville.
Woods says social media is just one of the types of marketing the store uses. Although it does help get more foot traffic to the store, sometimes people only come to take photos or visit the store.
“We’re glad that people love the space and everything, but the only way that bookstores are going to stay open is if people buy something,” she says. “I do feel like social media kind of helps lead to showrooming and showboating.”
Singletary doesn't believe social media attracts the audience the bookstore is trying to reach. Most people on social media have short attention spans, she says, which is why they engage with short-form media.
“We want you to get involved in this book, love this book and just become fully immersed. That’s the customer that I’m looking for and I don’t think we’re gonna find them on social media,” she says.
They are most interested in connecting with and serving people in the community. Many neighborhoods on the South Side are literary deserts, Woods says, making it important to have a physical space in Bronzeville where they could reach the community who need a bookstore the most.
“We wanted people to, of course, have a connection with the books, but we also wanted to be kind of like a community beacon of culture as well,” Woods says. “We wanted to be a safe space for people to come to.”
“One thing I will say, a lot of our books deal with Black and brown voices, history and things like that,” Singletary says. “We need this stuff accessible for our communities because a lot of it is not taught in schools. What is taught in schools, they’re trying to take it out.”
Da Book Joint still makes most sales through events they host and by attending pop-up events around the city that support local vendors. The store’s social media is mainly used to promote events and highlight different books and authors.
Singletary and Woods have bigger plans for Da Book Joint and are planning to move out of Boxville and into a new location on the South Side. Their long-term goal is for the store to become a community center that will provide classes and workshops for the neighborhood.
“The South Side is our mission,” Singletary says. “We’re not going anywhere because the South is where the books are needed ... We just want to make sure we’re here and our people know that we’re available.”
