This article examines the role of two African American-owned and -operated bookstores in the literacy practices and education of their participants. Part of a larger ethnographic study of Participatory Literacy Communities (PLCs), this study shows how featured authors and audience participants considered these bookstores as both alternative and supplementary knowledge spaces for literacy learning. This research offers educational anthropology and literacy research new ways for looking at the links between literacy, identity, and education. (Contains 2 notes and 1 table.)