Is there a better salve for insomnia than a good book? Screens give you jitters. Pages soothe you. Yet the newest bookstore in the Mission, Medicine for Nightmares, speaks to calamities much larger than sleeplessness.
“The store is named for the nightmare we’re living in,” said co-owner Tân Khánh Cao, “which is largely controlled by a white power structure.”
Co-owner Josiah Luis Alderete picks up where his business partner leaves off, explaining that in books one can find a potent antidote for our societal malaise. “As a Chicano, literature has been medicine against the nightmares,” he explained. “That’s what you can find in here.”