"Octavia's Bookshelf will highlight those authors every single day," said Nikki High, the owner of Octavia's bookshelf.
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With these authors competing against tens of thousands of titles to get stocked in bookstores, High, who's from Pasadena - wanted to help.
High said, growing up it was hard to find Black characters and authors to relate to.
"A time period where there's not a lot of representation of me - right, on television, magazines, whatever. So you're sort of limited to how much you can dream," she said.
She noticed something while reading sci-fi as a kid.
"I never really saw Black people in the future. The writers were creating these fantasy stories in a thousand years and I was like 'wait, where did all the people of color go?'" she said.
High's love of reading started at a young age, but it was one specific sci-fi author that changed the way she saw books.
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That author was a Pasadena native, Octavia Butler, who wrote dystopian stories with themes like black injustice and women's rights. It inspired her - hence the name behind High's new bookstore, "Octavia's Bookshelf."
"A month where we celebrate Black authors and activists and politicians, and to think that in some small way I am contributing to that celebration by being the first Black woman to open a bookstore in Pasadena - it means so much to me," she said.
Octavia's Bookshelf will open its doors on Feb. 18 during Black History Month.