In New York City, afro feminist literary spaces have an audience but often lack funding

Sister’s Uptown Bookstore will celebrate its 20th anniversary in January. Not only is it the only black owned bookstore in Harlem, it is the only concrete literary space for women of color in New York City. “The premise was to embrace and incorporate the energy of women, and women of color, because if you look around us there is no such institution” says Janifer P. Wilson, its founder.
Her idea was to create a safe space in which women of color form a community around their love for literature. “You can’t go to the library and talk, you can’t sit in church and talk,” Wilson said. “So this is a safe place where women can actually come and feel free to talk about the woes of life and how we move from here”.
Located in the upper part of Harlem on Amsterdam Avenue, the bookstore has been able to stay open despite gentrification thanks to a stabilized rent, an opportunity that other bookstores rarely benefit from.
Wilson is one the first women in New York City to open up a literary space solely dedicated to women of color. Today, others are following in the same footsteps and have created safe spaces in which readers, but also writers and publishers, can gather and share their love for a literature that better represents them.
OlaRonke Akinmowo created the Free Black Women’s Library five years ago. She started this project by displaying 100 books written by black women on her stoop in Brooklyn. The concept being that anyone is welcome to bring a book written by a black woman and trade it against a new one. “I wanted to do something to create access” she says. “It’s not always easy to find these books”.
Seeing the appeal this concept created in her community, Akinmowo decided to transform her project into a traveling library, which makes regular stops across New York City’s five boroughs. She also relies on social media to promote her project. On her latest stop at MoMa PS1 in Long Island City during the New York Art Book Fair last September, she successfully recruited volunteers off of instagram to help run her stand. Women who “came and offered to help” she says. “Because when I did this last year I did it by myself and it was a lot”.

Akinmowo counts on the help of others to keep this project running. “I still need something to transport the books around, some type of vehicle so when I do events like this it won’t be so complicated getting a ride”.
Sistah Girl Book Club is another example of a volunteer run space. Based in Brooklyn, Sharee Hereford launched this project in 2014 with the help of friends and the contributions of book club members to her website. This project is solely based online except for one annual event, Behind the Pen, where authors and book club members can meet in real life. “In general, black indie authors don’t have platforms” in New York City, said Sharee Hereford. “I saw this was a gap that needed to be filled”. For their second edition in 2018, over 300 tickets were sold. Hereford and her team are currently in the works of organizing their next event in August 2020.
To Hereford, the lack of literary spaces for women of color doesn’t make sense as “black college girls are the number one people who read in America”. And in fact, a 2014 study by Pew Research asserts that college educated black women are most likely to read a book in America.

“The fact that we even have to create these spaces is letting the world know that they’re not making it readily accessible” she says. The sole act of creating literary safe spaces for women of color becomes an “act of activism”.
The lack of such spaces is due to a lack of funding, says Jennifer Baker, a book editor and the creator of the online podcast Minorities in Publishing. “People volunteer and they do whatever they can in their capacity… and then they burn out.” she says. “How many people want to work for free? Not a lot.” Funding is also why literary spaces for women of color turn to social media to find their audience. On the internet, “I can post whatever I want and it doesn’t cost me a dime”.
Finding an audience isn’t the issue, but funding is. It is a common issue these women have to face.
“One of the things that was said to me when I opened the bookstore — folks said ‘well she’s not gonna make it because black folks don’t read’… well, that was my challenge” says Wilson.
“There’s enough black folks reading that we’ve still been able to hold down this space for almost 20 years”.
