‘More than just a store’: Homeward Books Collective provides a gathering space for community, organizing and learning

When Sharon Saffold-Harris first walked into the courtyard outside of Homeward Books Collective, she knew it was precisely the place she had been searching for. As a PhD candidate in Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona working on her dissertation, she had been looking for a place to feel grounded, decompress and rest. 

“Just yesterday I said, ‘I need a break. I need to step back.’ Like I felt like I needed to go home. I literally felt like I wanted to catch a plane tomorrow and go back to Georgia,” she said. “And then I came here.”

That feeling of home is what the worker-owners of Homeward Books Collective had in mind when they opened the Tucson bookstore in April.

“Homeward is a sense of momentum forward toward a place that you know you're supposed to be,” said Megan Downey, one of the worker-owners of the bookshop. 

They want the place to feel safe and welcoming. 

Saffold-Harris said she felt safe as soon as she stepped into the courtyard. She fought the urge to take her shoes off and dig her feet into the ground, because she felt it would be unprofessional to do so while listening to the head of her department read from their newly released book, surrounded by coworkers from the LGBTQ+ Institute at the University of Arizona. 

“I immediately felt grounded,” Saffold-Harris said. “I will come back. I will take my shoes off when I don't have to worry about being professional, and I will ground myself here.”

She plans to bring coffee with her next time, buy books for herself and her grandchildren and rest. 

“The reason why I’ll come back is because it became my space,” she said. “When I came, it was like, ‘Ah, this is what my soul must have.’”

Books that offer BIPOC representation

Homeward Books is a one-room shop tucked into the back of the Many Hands Courtyard, on First Avenue just south of Fort Lowell Road in Tucson. It’s surrounded by four other small buildings.  

At the center of the buildings in the courtyard, water trickles down a yellow fountain with bright orange and red flower tiles. Mesquite trees provide shade. 

Inside the bookstore, the shelves feature a carefully curated selection of books. New and used books line the shelves, many of them written by BIPOC authors. The non-fiction section includes books about race, politics, LGBTQ+ identity, food and medicine and organizing. 

Saffold-Harris was excited to see children’s books with Black protagonists. A Black woman from Georgia, she didn’t expect to feel so represented in Tucson, she said. 

“I saw that children's selection, Harriet Tubman, bell hooks, the gentleman who won the award about doing the hair, that nappy hair,” she said excitedly, referring to “Hair Love” by Matthew A. Cherry. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ So I've already picked out the four books I'm buying to send to my grandchildren back in Georgia. It was such a wide selection.”

Inside the shop, a corner shelf features books about Black history, organizing and love. A back-to-school display on the same wall features children’s books, notebooks and young adult novels. 

Homeward also sells records and board games; some can be borrowed and played in the store. 

The back patio has furniture surrounding a coffee table. String lights hang above the space and a standing wooden pallet holds planters made of tin coffee cans. 

“[The bookstore is] scrappy, but in like, the sustainable way, the thrifted way,” Downey said, sitting in the back patio. “Everything that we have in there is thrifted, or we built for ourselves out of pallets and recycled wood.”

Taylor Marie Doherty has visited Homeward Books several times, both as a vendor at their first market, where she sold candles and sustainable body products and as a customer. 

Having a space where people can be in community and learn, especially as books are increasingly being censored not just in K-12 schools but also in universities, is important, Doherty said. 

“I think that there is this crackdown on censorship and, really, attacks on what we have access to in terms of education,” she said. “So creating spaces by us and for us as a community feels so important to combat that and to also just be together. When things are difficult, it's easier when you're with other people.”

The worker-owners want Homeward to be a third space, somewhere that isn’t home or work, where people can gather, learn and build community. 

“I want people to feel like it is more than just a store,” said Lillie Watson, worker-owner. “I want people to feel like, yes, they can come and make friends and be in community with other people who are like-minded” or who are curious to learn more.

‘Building better futures’

On a recent Wednesday, Homeward Books had a scheduled board game night. The group of people who had RSVP’d learned that there was a protest in support of mutual aid groups in Tucson and decided to cancel and join the rally instead.

That decision exemplifies the kind of space Watson and Downey want to create, one in which community members feel called to learn and organize for a better future. 

“We always say, ‘Building Better Futures,’ and I want this to be a space where people feel like they can come and pick up information about how to build better futures in our world and just ways that they can do something if they're feeling called to do something,” Watson said. 

A day after the mutual aid rally, about 50 people sat in the courtyard listening as Eithne Luibhéid talked about her new book, "Abolitionist Intimacies: Queer and Trans Migrants Against the Deportation State,” as a part of the Trans Studies Research Cluster, which hosted the book reading event and will host additional monthly conversations at the bookstore.

Luibhéid is a professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at UA and an author of several books about LGBTQ+ migrants. 

As the sun set behind her and an occasional cool breeze swept through the courtyard, Luibhéid shared a story from the beginning of the book about how a queer migrant in the Tucson area tried to stop a deportation, putting their body on the line by crawling under a Border Patrol vehicle. 

“We are who our relations are, and we are who our stories are,” said Reid Gomez from the Trans Studies Research Cluster. “And we need places to tell our stories and places to hear stories, places that value books and writing and literature and arts and games and sewing, all the things they do here and and a space, a space that we can hold for each other to be present with each other.”

‘We wanted to do things differently’

Watson and Downey met when they were co-workers at Bookmans. In November 2023, after they both had left their Bookmans job, they started talking about the possibility of owning a bookstore. 

“From the start, we wanted to do things differently, or organize ourselves differently,” Watson said. “Because I think from the start a big thing for us was wanting to feel ownership over our work and breaking down traditional ways that jobs and workplaces are set up.” 

Downey conducted research on collective business models and created a PowerPoint presentation. In a collective business model, the workers are equal owners of the shop and collectively make business decisions.

The first few meetings included a lot of brainstorming, they said. The group created individual mood boards, which they then shared with each other, showcasing their vision for their dream bookstore. 

Last September, Homeward had two pop-up shops at local markets. Two months later, Downey came across the Many Hands Courtyard rental on Craigslist. 

It was the cozy, warm and welcoming space they envisioned on their mood boards, Watson said. Their lease started in December and the store opened in April with four worker-owners, Downey, Watson and their partners. 

Downey and Watson leaned in toward each other, smiling as they talked about how opening a bookstore together has strengthened their friendship.  

“Especially in hard times like these, this has been something that's very centering,” Downey said, looking at Watson as she spoke. “And having something to work on, having a future to build, having something that's very concrete, I feel like, has kept me from feeling the kind of spiraling dread that I hear a lot of my peers discussing. And so, yeah, I feel like just us having this thing to work on together has been very grounding.”

Watson smiled as she listened to Downey, affirming her words with “yes” every so often.

“Everyone has to find their own way of doing the work,” Watson added. “And for us, this is a way for us to do the work. Creating community space, giving people access to really cool topics and books.”