Research in the Community - Observations in a Local Bookstore

For my observations in a bookstore, I visited a Barnes and Noble in my hometown. It is both very small and a bookstore I have been to many times, so I already knew where most things were located in it. There are not very many books that are immediately obviously about diverse cultures or books that highlight social issues; it takes looking at various books very closely to find books about either of those things. When these book are found, they are usually in the most random of places throughout the store. More often than not, the travel guides in the travel section tell the most of diverse cultures. These books are sort of in the background, not hidden exactly, but certainly not displayed in a way that would immediately catch a customer’s eye. More often than not, you find books like these in the bargain section, where lots of random stuff that people don’t usually buy are located. The authors of these book are pretty diverse, though they are usually authors that most people have never heard of. They are mostly accessible to adults only, because they are located in the part of the bookstore that kids will not usually visit. A lot of the time, the cover of the book portrays some sort of cultural stereotype, with the supposed purpose of attracting the attention of a customer, since a customer will usually be more receptive to something that they already had an idea about. These books will usually have some sort of happy ending, while using the characters to either completely defy or completely reinforce the stereotype that the book displayed to begin with. This bookstore that I visited is located in a neighborhood where mostly minorities live. This might help explain the lack of cultural books in the bookstore, as the store’s marketing team might be under the assumption that the people that live in this neighborhood would not appreciate the culture of books about other cultures or social issues.