This bookstore in Little Haiti has been a cultural and literary landmark for decades

The soft-spoken, bespectacled man perched behind the counter with a clear view of Little Haiti’s main street speaks volumes.

Jean-Marie “Jan Mapou” Denis has many titles, both on the white shelves of his colorful bookstore and in his distinguished career that has taken him from classrooms in Haiti to being the proprietor of Libreri Mapou next to the Caribbean Marketplace on Northeast Second Avenue.

He is a Black entrepreneur and cultural leader who has labored to lift up Haitian art and literature for immigrants and refugees resettling in Miami.

These days, staying open is challenging for small business owners in Little Haiti such as Mapou, who has weathered economic downturns and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We work very hard, especially myself. And I do it for passion because I like good books. I like culture. I like to encourage the youths and the community to keep their culture, to keep their language,” he said.

Mapou knows about struggle and the resilience required to endure, a hallmark of the Haitian people.

In the 1960s, he was a schoolteacher in Haiti who got in trouble for teaching his students in Creole, the language they spoke at home, instead of the state-mandated French. Then he was co-founder of Mouvman Kreyòl Ayisyen (Haitian Creole Movement), which fought to make Creole the primary language used in Haitian schools. At one point during his advocacy, he was jailed by Haitian authorities for four months with no explanation, he said.

He was a worker who managed Miami International Airport’s parking facilities, a job that brought him down to Miami from New York in the 1980s. In his free time, he wrote plays in Creole and staged his productions before large audiences in the Olympia Theater downtown and other auditoriums.

Then he was an exhibitor at the nascent Caribbean Marketplace in 1990, where he first sold books in Creole at a booth called Libreri Mapou. By 1992, he was able to open his standalone store in the building next door, a building he would eventually buy, with 300 books from his personal library and a passion for preserving Haitian culture.

Thirty years later, he’s got more than 7,000 books and decades of memories. Scenes of Black children playing in the woods and fishermen bringing their haul ashore, rendered in soft pastels, adorn the back wall where artists’ works are displayed. Under the frames, a collection of plaques, trophies, city proclamations and awards illustrate the respect held for Mapou by local governments and community organizations.

Libreri Mapou has been a home for young people wishing to learn Creole, politicians seeking connection with Haitian Americans and poets wanting to hone their craft. Mapou recalls hosting meetings with the late Miami Commissioner Art Teele and Haitian-American leaders to discuss building a Haitian cultural center, which was eventually built next door. He remembers artists and friends gathering for the grand opening of the expanded shop in April 1992, including novelist Dany Laferrière, who gave a rousing speech to commemorate the first day of business at 5919 NE Second Ave.

“He said, ‘This place will be the place for the Haitian intellect.’ He said, ‘This place will be famous one day,’ ” Mapou said.

The store is a fixture on tourist guides for Miami and Little Haiti, and Mapou has been interviewed many times by local and national media. He’s a familiar voice on WLRN, where he appears on the nightly educational program Radyo Lekol.

The pandemic has been hard on most local businesses, and Libreri Mapou has some scars.

“My business was closed for 14 months,” he said.

Sales dipped after the stay-at-home orders and commercial closures halted the economy, cutting off the reliable stream of tourists and local regulars who visited the shop. Mapou switched to mail-order sales, but few orders came in. The virus claimed some of his friends and clients.

“Here in the area of Little Haiti, I know of 10 of my friends, customers who died because of COVID,” he said in an interview this week.

Since May, Libreri Mapou has been open to limited customers, who must wear masks. At 79, Mapou is being careful, but he’s also taken advantage of the extra time at home. He’s compiled anthologies of his plays and columns from Haiti en Marche, a newspaper for the diaspora. He’s also worked on his autobiography.

He sees the struggle of local businesses around him, especially as redevelopment pressure continues to squeeze Little Haiti’s residential and commercial corridors. Potential buyers frequently knock on his door, leave him voicemails, send him texts or email him.

“I don’t even know how they got my email,” he said.

He’s lucky, he said, because he owns the building. He also said he’s fortunate to have loyal supporters who still make donations.

“Last week, someone gave me two boxes of Haitian books,” he said. “He told me they belonged to his mother, who passed away,” Mapou said. “Despite the pandemic, I still get books coming in from all over.”

This story was originally published August 25, 2021 at 6:00 AM.