photograph by jesse davis
Jordan Mays-Demoir and Jeremee DeMoir
The bookstore is quiet and warm when I drop by on a cold and cloudy late-autumn day. The two workers at the sales counter, who happen to be the owner and the inventory specialist, add to the warm atmosphere with a cheerful greeting. My eye is caught by a prominently displayed copy of Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda (featured in the February 2021 issue of this magazine).
“That book is great! Did you know that there are four Memphians with stories in it?” asks Jeremee DeMoir, a Memphian, educator, lifelong reader, author, and owner of the Bluff City’s newest bookstore, DeMoir Books & Things.
Nice and knowledgeable — that’s two points right off the bat. I confess that, yes, I do know; in fact, I interviewed three of the four Memphians, and I’m here a little early to take some photos to accompany the magazine feature we discussed. Jeremee introduces me to his husband, Jordan Mays-Demoir; we chat about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer, also on display, and how the novel is the perfect distillation of Coates’ nonfiction work on race in America and his more fantastic (shall we say “marvelous”?) work writing Black Panther and Captain America comics.
And that is perhaps the best introduction to DeMoir Books — within minutes of walking in the small store on White Station Road, I was deep in a conversation about comic books, local authors, and some of the best nonfiction writing to grace the pages of The Atlantic. In short, I had been in the store for less than five minutes and already felt like a regular.
Children of Books
DeMoir’s journey to being the owner of a local bookstore started before he even took his first steps. “When my parents found out they were pregnant with me, my mom instantly went to her local bookstore and found these different amazing baby books and nursery rhyme books, and she started reading to me in utero. So the moment I was physically in the world, the journey continued,” DeMoir says. “I fell in love with reading.”
That love is a driving force for DeMoir, for whom the art of storytelling is a passion kept close to his heart. He still treasures his childhood books and has even managed to hold onto some of them. And, of course, he progressed from nursery rhymes to more challenging material.
“My favorite childhood book growing up was called Willie Jerome. It’s actually by a local Memphis author — Alice Faye Duncan,” DeMoir says, giving a brief synopsis of the plot. Willie loves to play the trumpet, and he practices often, sometimes to the chagrin of his neighbors. But the young musician’s passion yields results, as his practice makes perfect. Eventually, his playing helps soothe his family members and some of his neighbors who are stressed. It should be no surprise that a book by a local author, about the way a passion for the arts can create ripples in the community, is one of DeMoir’s favorites. Willie Jerome tells a tale not unlike the bookseller’s own story. But more on that soon.
“I’ve always been an avid reader, but I wasn’t always the strongest writer, until I got to seventh grade. That’s when I met the most amazing middle-school creative writing teacher [Jonathan Moore], who helped me tap my imagination and showed me that writing words can literally shape your world and change it. They ended up inspiring me to become a teacher to do the same thing.” — Jeremee DeMoir
“I eventually fell in love with Alex Haley’s Queen, which is his followup to Roots,” DeMoir continues. “As an adult I go back and forth between Young Adult fiction and adult fiction. There are so many amazing authors out right now that I really, really enjoy.” He reels off a list of names including Angie Thomas, George M. Johnson, TomiAdeyemi.
“I am a part of the Harry Potter generation. Harry Potter started when I was a kid,” DeMoir says. “As Harry grew up, I did as well. The first three books are considered children’s books, but the others are considered YA.”
DeMoir believes the gradual change in tone and reading level in the Harry Potter series prepared his generation to read more widely. As readers who fell in love with the earlier, lighter Potter books revisited them, even as they were older, they learned that reading outside their specified age bracket wasn’t a crime. That, along with the increased diversity of characters and writers, is what helped the Young Adult sub-genre thrive. “You have to have this open mind to the progression of literature,” DeMoir says. “It just broke the wall of what was acceptable or what was suitable based on age or religion or race or creed or anything.”
“The thing about YA fiction — and YA genres, period — is over the past five years, it has expanded to be such a diverse universe that isn’t just about teenage stories, but anyone who has a story,” DeMoir says. “The YA genre has been flooded with diversity and inclusion and so many LGBTQIA+ topics and so many stories that weren’t necessarily being represented in the time in adult fiction literature — or maybe weren’t necessarily reaching the masses.
“It speaks to the teenager that still lives inside of us that maybe didn’t get the chance to grow up all the way. It gives us a chance to go back and relive those moments we might have had, those shoulda, coulda, woulda moments.”
Reader, Teacher, Author, Bookseller
“My background is in education, so I spent a lot of my years post-college teaching English and creative writing,” says Demoir. I’ll always have that literature background in the back of my head. Our goal as educators is to expose students to the world that should be around them.”
Kids feel forced to read books for school, but the classics don’t always speak to kids, which sometimes sours them on reading altogether. “That gives a very limited scope,” DeMoir says. “The world is changing, and we have to change with the world and present new literature that can be not only all-inclusive but also meaningful to people. It’s super important to find stories that speak to the kid of 2021, the adult of 2021.”
DeMoir’s mission is to help provide for the wants and needs of everyone in his community. That mission is, he believes, both the founding principle of the bookstore, and also one vital purpose for fiction. “It’s so amazing to be able to open up Angie Thomas’ book — well, any of her books; you know she’s from Jackson, Mississippi, so she’s up the street — and just being able to walk into a contemporary world that looks just like ours today. And then jumping into Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone that takes us to an imaginative world in Africa,” the bookseller says, his voice tinged with excitement. “It gives us all the opportunity to have escapism while still learning about the world outside of what we usually experience. That’s how we become well-rounded people. It’s how we become agents of literacy.”
DeMoir’s journey to being an agent of literacy may have begun before birth, but that doesn’t mean the path was linear. He has been a reader, educator, author, and bookseller, but even someone as passionate about his purpose as DeMoir needs help along the way sometimes. “I’ve always been an avid reader, but I wasn’t always the strongest writer, until I got to seventh grade,” he remembers. “That’s when I met the most amazing middle-school creative writing teacher [Jonathan Moore], who helped me tap my imagination and showed me that writing words can literally shape your world and change it. They ended up inspiring me to become a teacher to do the same thing.
“This is my last week, actually,” DeMoir tells me. After several years in the classroom, teaching both English and creative writing, he realizes he needs to devote more and more time to the bookstore. “I just had this inkling to feed the other half of me, which was reading. So I had to make DeMoir Books happen.”
The Bookstore
See a need in the community, and fill it. That — along with the aforementioned lifelong love of literature — is ultimately what brought DeMoir Books & Things to life.
“I taught in underserved communities that didn’t even necessarily have access to a library in the community,” DeMoir explains. “I initially started out by donating books, because I have way too many.” But donating books to libraries didn’t fully satisfy the urge to share a passion.
“I just absolutely love books, and I wanted to share my love of reading and writing with people, not just my students but people in general,” he continues.
“We offer a local author section for people who might have a story but might not have a publishing house behind them to get their books on the shelf. So we offer them an opportunity to do that. One thing I constantly say is that everyone in life deserves a seat at the table. We all deserve to be physically seen.”
The drive to help the community, to offer seats at the table, has served DeMoir well. Starting a new business during a global pandemic isn’t exactly easy. “I was super terrified,” DeMoir admits. “Just as we were getting ready to start with all the licensure they closed the city back down.” His family was nervous, too, and told him to be cautious, and he was, but DeMoir wouldn’t be dissuaded. He made sure to have an online presence, able to order books the store didn’t actually have on the shelf at the moment, so he could still make sales if there was another quarantine. And, in keeping with the community-first mindset, whatever the mandate of the moment, DeMoir Books & Things requires patrons to don masks to enter the store. “It’s been a yo-yoing process,” he says of the changing mandates.
The care has paid off. DeMoir says they get foot traffic from White Station Middle School, “and weekends are really great.”
They also host game nights, bi-weekly movie nights, offer a loyalty program for customers, and have hosted booksignings for local authors in the store’s event space. “That’s been a fulfilling thing,” DeMoir says, and as an author himself, he knows the value of seeing one’s work come to fruition. “People have come in and booked the event space so they can have their own movie nights with their family and friends because of Covid and they don’t necessarily feel safe going to the theater. It’s been a great community spot since we opened our doors. Our calendar has been rotating! We’ve definitely been busy.
“Every day hasn’t been super crazy, but every day is something. I’m thankful for that.”
DeMoir Books & Things is located at 739 White Station Road, Memphis, Tennessee 38122; 901-464-0395. Find out more at demoir-books.square.site.
