by Carolyn Bick

When Vickie Williams died in 2017 of a pericardial effusion, her godson, Hassan Messiah El, slid into the role of managing L.E.M.S. Bookstore, the last Black-owned bookstore in the Pacific Northwest that’s focused on the African Diaspora.

But things weren’t easy financially, and Messiah El found himself struggling to make ends meet at the bookstore, while juggling a family and two other jobs as an actor and ecommerce merchant on Amazon.

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