Last Updated on March 25, 2025 by BVN
Alyssah Hall and Aryana Noroozi
Danielle and Ruthie Myers-Porter have been married for nearly four years and opened up their book store Get Lit Books & Things on Sept. 1, 2024. Located on the second floor of the Moreno Valley Mall, Get Lit Books & Things is a self-proclaimed haven for queer folks, women, people of color and bibliophiles. Their slogan is “Why Be Othered Elsewhere, When You Can Be Centered Here.”
Other than carrying books that highlight marginalized communities, they sell various items like candles, jewelry, artwork, offer tarot readings, host book club events, story hours for children, game nights, and other workshops. Many of the items they sell in their shop are from local artists, jewelry makers and even some of the books carried are from local authors.
“It’s been a lot of fun; a huge learning curve. I think the best thing is that the community has been really supportive. I think when we first started, customers did more advertising and community outreach than we ever could have,” Danielle said.
“What we thought we were opening was a bookstore, but what we found is that it’s a community space,” said Ruthie.
Danielle has always loved books and bookstores. She loved the idea of being surrounded by written words and one day owning a tiny bookstore when she retired. Ironically, there is nothing tiny about their store, and Danielle and Ruthie are decades away from retirement.
Meanwhile, Ruthie was an English major who grew up on a farm in the Midwest and always liked reading, but she had never planned on opening a bookstore. Ruthie had plans of traveling and was fed up with Los Angeles traffic. She wanted to leave California, until she met her wife.
In 2022, Danielle was diagnosed with stage three ovarian cancer and took a year off of work while she was undergoing cancer treatment. After a year of being “stuck in the house,” Danielle was ready to go back to her very demanding, nearly 24-hours-a-day job — a job Ruthie said she wasn’t a fan of. When Danielle went back to her job, she realized she hated it there.
“I finally went to my boss, and I was like, ‘I don’t think I survived cancer for this, so I think I’m gonna quit.’ And so I did. I literally just quit the job without another job lined up. And I said, ‘Well, maybe this is a good time to start the bookstore,’” Danielle said.
Danielle quit her job in the fall of 2023, and then she and Ruthie started working on getting their business started. Ruthie already knew of Danielle’s dream of wanting to have a bookstore and she’s always been “team Danielle.” Ruthie got a job at a tax company to help support them and learned a lot about how to do taxes, which she fell in love with.
“We went to the SBA [Small Business Association], and one thing she [the SBA worker] said, not only have a side hustle, but make sure that side hustle is in alignment with what you want to do business wise,” Ruthie said.
Ruthie had already been doing her and her family’s taxes, as well as consulting for other small businesses. She figured the best way she could serve their future business was to learn how to do LLC taxes. Now, Ruthie does taxes on the side and Danielle does script writing on the side, while owning and managing their main business, the bookstore.
“I think running a business is hard regardless of what it would be. Anybody who jumps into a business, you realize immediately that you do not know as much as you think you know,” Danielle said.
“It was definitely the most arrogant thing I’ve ever done. Opening a bookstore in general is already ambitious. Just with so much competition out there from Amazon and online retailers…I think that we were really fortunate in that we did speak to some people who really helped us, gave us some good advice,” Danielle said.
Danielle and Ruthie did a lot of research when opening Get Lit Books & Things, but the most valuable research was done by conducting “informational interviews” with other business owners. They credited building relationships with Cellar Door Books in Riverside, Salt Eaters Book Shop in Inglewood, Bird & Beckett Books & Records in San Francisco, and Reparations Book Club in Los Angeles for giving them useful tips for their own store.
While the couple found the financial side of a business start-up difficult, having to use their own savings and credit cards instead of loans, they found building their clientele to be almost seamless in comparison.
“We’re not experiencing some of the things that other bookstores have experienced that are similar, like either Black or queer or women, we’ve had the exact opposite experience. Moreno Valley has been a really wonderful haven, and we have the security in the mall, and it’s been really wonderful,” Ruthie said.
Ruthie and Danielle are actively involved in the queer community as they volunteer at Riverside Pride, Black Lesbians United, and participate on a queer sports team. Ruthie shared that being part of this community has made it easier to grow their business given the community support.
During the current reign of President Donald Trump and the removal of DEI-related initiatives and his attack on the LGBTQ+ community, Ruthie noted that the Cellar Door bookshop had issues with their previous location because they were hosting drag queen Story Hour.
Ruthie said that at the Cellar Door’s current location, people are protesting on the corners, which is an experience Get Lit Books & Things has never had. In fact, she said the Moreno Valley Mall feels like a family and that security and other business owners always look out for them.
“You’re not going to stumble upon a book that is anti- you or your existence. I think that a lot of people really appreciate that,” Danielle said
“We get people coming in here and saying they feel safe or that they feel like they can be their authentic self. We’ve had people who will fully come out. They call us aunties, and I used to volunteer at the LGBT Center in LA, so I’m able to facilitate these conversations safely…because I’ve done this before,” Ruthie said.
Ruthie said that it feels really good to provide a safe space, something the community desperately needed.
Both Ruthie and Danielle shared that one of the highlights of their job is the children that excitedly come into their store. They said that the kids will come into the store on the weekend and hang out and play chess, or drag their parents in the store and share that it’s their favorite book store.
“We have a lot of people who come in and they want to buy something to be supportive, to support a small business, a Black-owned business, a queer-owned business. And so they come in, and…I think they get what they need, but they also get the added boost of knowing that they’ve done a little something to preserve what is important to them in this world,” Danielle continued.
“In here, the only thing that’s not welcome is hate. That’s what we’ve been promoting, and love and self-love and community and caring and just hyping folks up because we could all use more love at this current juncture and always. So, that’s really what we do here is just love on people,” Ruthie said.
