JHOANNA BELFER
The founder and owner of Bel Canto Books puts the literary works of BIPOC and female authors at the forefront of her bookstore.
Photo by Nannette Ricaforte
It’s been nearly three years since Jhoanna Belfer left her well-established career in hospitality to expand Bel Canto Books. What started as a pop-up book club held in a local wine bar has now become a full-fledged independent bookstore located in Long Beach, CA.
With an MFA in creative writing and a fondness for books since childhood, Belfer always had aspirations of becoming a writer or doing something involved in the field. She especially enjoys writing poetry that focuses on her experience as an immigrant and as a woman.
After the election of former President Donald Trump in 2016, Belfer often reflected on her life, the state of the country, and whether or not she was “going in the right direction.” “The 2016 election, like for a lot of people, really shook up my assumptions of how our world is,” she says. “And so I started to think about switching gears.”
In 2017, Belfer attended a writing conference in Washington, D.C., where she listened to a conversation between two of her favorite authors and bookstore owners Ann Patchett and Emma Straub. “At the very end, somebody asked, ‘If we want to do something to help our community, what can we do?’ And Ann Patchett just said, ‘Well, if you can, you should open a bookstore.’”
After an ample amount of research and participating in a week-long “bookstore boot camp” with fellow aspiring bookstore owners, Belfer opened Bel Canto Books in 2018.
Photo by Nannette Ricaforte
“We started doing pop-ups in front of different businesses at street fairs, at our local farmer's market, and eventually had a regular rotation of pop-up events,” she says. “I did that for about a year and a half and was gaining traction and a following. What was nice [about] the farmer's market was that it became a regular monthly appearance, so people knew to look for us there.”
In the summer of 2019, Belfer left her corporate position at Ayres Hotels and moved Bel Canto Books into a brick-and-mortar space inside The Hangout, which houses a collective of small businesses. In addition to the bookstore’s two walls of bookcases and a center table configuration of its monthly featured books, Bel Canto Books also shares an outdoor space that contains a café and wine bar. “Folks can just come to the store on their own or invite a friend to pick up a book, get a glass of wine or beer and sit in the garden, and read and chat and hang out.”
During the beginning of the pandemic, Belfer had to close Bel Canto Books for over a month, so she came up with a new and innovative business strategy while working from home: a book concierge service. In addition to offering personalized book recommendations to her customers, she’d personally deliver these books to their doorsteps if they lived in Long Beach.
“I think because people were stuck at home, they realized, Oh, I remember I really enjoy reading. Maybe I’ll get back into that,” Belfer adds. “Since then, we’ve been open in The Hangout for over two years.”
“I try to focus on maybe lesser known authors who are not getting the media coverage I think that they deserve.”
Bel Canto Books highlights a selection of books every month according to a certain theme, with an emphasis on women, people of color, and other historically marginalized authors.
“I do tend to focus on books that I'm not seeing at Target or whatever big box store that you go to because I figure if you want the new — I don't know — James Patterson, you'll find it somewhere. I try to focus on maybe lesser known authors who are not getting the media coverage I think that they deserve.”
Bel Canto Books also hosts a series of online book clubs, including one specifically dedicated to sharing stories by Asian American authors called Read AAPI Book Club. As a Filipina American, Belfer felt a certain responsibility to “do what [she] can to focus on the joys and talents of the AAPI community,” especially following the wave of anti-Asian attacks in 2020. “Our book club is like a tiny way to give back and help uplift those authors that I think are doing amazing things,” she remarks.
One book she recommends is Troublemaker by John Cho, who discussed his New York Times bestseller during a virtual event hosted by the bookstore in March. For Belfer, hosting book clubs, author Q&A sessions, and other monthly events — both in-person and online — is her way of building a community of avid readers with a shared appreciation for discussing the latest book releases and meeting new people.
“I want them to feel welcomed and I want them to be challenged in a good way.”
“I want them to feel welcomed and I want them to be challenged in a good way,” Belfer says. “I think it's important to have books that, obviously, everyone is gonna love. But to me, it's really important to have books that people are maybe discovering for the first time. I hope that [Bel Canto Books] is a space that makes them feel alive and excited to be surrounded by books and the arts.”
All images courtesy of Jhoanna Belfer.
