For more than two years, the Bronx borough of New York City – home to 1.5 million people – was without a single general interest bookstore.

That has now changed, thanks to Noëlle Santos, who made it her years-long mission to bring an independent community bookstore to her native borough.

“I was disgusted. I was angry at the powers that be that allowed this to happen in a community of 1.5 million people in the literary capital of the world,” Santos told the Guardian.

Her store, called The Lit. Bar, opened on Saturday.

When the borough’s last bookstore, an outlet of the national Barnes & Noble bookstore chain in a north-east Bronx shopping center, announced it was closing its doors, residents responded with protests and a petition drive pushing for it to stay. It was to no avail, and the store closed at the end of 2016.

The rise of online shopping has put the squeeze on bookstores around the country, but the Bronx’s book drought is unique in New York: the city has an estimated 814 bookshops, and every other borough has general interest stores.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘It’s because we’re black. That’s why it got like this,’ said Noëlle Santos of the dearth of bookstores in the Bronx. Photograph: Courtesy The Lit Bar

For Santos, it’s not hard to explain why. “It’s because we’re black. That’s why it got like this,” she said. “It’s not just that – it’s class, and … when poverty is concentrated in a community, you’re not going to see the same investment.”

After the Barnes & Noble closed, the borough only had a few bookstores on college campuses or selling religious texts.

Santos, 32, was working in human resources in Manhattan when she decided to devote her energy to opening a bookstore in the Bronx.

“I had always been someone who measured my success by how far I could get away from the Bronx,” she said. “I felt like a coward leaving my borough in no better condition than I found it.”

Growing up in the Soundview neighborhood, Santos had always been an avid reader, but it had never occurred to her she could make a living selling books.

“When I was younger, I used to think authors were dead people. I didn’t think they were real live people I could connect to,” she said. “Imagine if my junior high school teacher had given me The Hate U Give or Elizabeth Acevedo’s Poet X.”

The new entrepreneur had no experience in publishing or retail, so she offered herself up as free labor at independent bookshops around the city in return for a chance to learn the ropes.

She won second place in a New York Public Library startup competition, and launched a crowd funding campaign that raised more than $150,000 to open the store.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Lit. Bar, a new bookstore in the Bronx, will also double as a wine bar. Photograph: Courtesy The Lit Bar

After finding a space in the Mott Haven neighborhood in the south Bronx, she launched The Lit. Bar, which will double as a wine bar.

The Bronx, still the poorest of the city’s five boroughs, has begun to see a boom in development, especially in South Bronx neighborhoods most easily accessible to Manhattan, where newcomers are moving in.

The gentrification has come with fierce controversy, but Santos hopes her business will serve both populations.

“This little swath of the South Bronx was gentrifying, so it was important to me we have a hub where existing residents and the transplants who are coming into the South Bronx can become real neighbors, and have a space to connect on a human level,” she said.

In stocking the 1,700-square-foot storefront, the owner mixed popular titles with books by writers from marginalized communities, highlighting black feminism and Bronx-bred authors.

“We are a general interest bookstore. You will find the bestsellers, the James Patterson, the Danielle Steel,” Santos said. “We wanted to address ageism, sexism – all the isms.”