From those humble roots, the barbershop-cum-bookstore Libreria Martinez Books and Art Gallery became one of the largest purveyors of Spanish-language books in the country, as well as a center for literacy advocacy whose influence continues to ripple nationwide.

These were my tickets out of the copper mines,” says Rueben Martinez, sweeping his hand over the books stacked on the coffee table inside his small, sage-colored home. A sign on the lawn announces, “This House is Celebrating its Centennial,” and shaded by two stately pepper trees, the craftsman could be a child’s drawing of the platonic home, complete with a pair of porch recliners and a cascade of purple wisteria tumbling from a trellis in the backyard. In the living room, to Martinez’s right, stands a neatly shelved low-boy bookcase containing titles by Mario Vargas Llosa and Miguel de Cervantes, and to his left, a tower of overflow teeters in the corner of the room, but it’s the tan leather barber’s chair, just a few feet away in Martinez’s office, that catches my attention first.

“I had a barbershop the size of these two rooms,” Martinez says, describing the now famous storefront to which he added one unlikely and transformative element: a single bookshelf.

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