Black-Owned
The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
**L.A. Times Book Prize Finalist**
**A November LibraryReads Pick**
Longtime NBC News reporter Char Adams writes a deeply compelling and rigorously reported history of Black political movements told through the lens of Black-owned bookstores, which have been centers for organizing from abolition to the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter.
In Black-Owned, Char Adams celebrates the living history of Black bookstores. Packed with stories of activism, espionage, violence, community, and perseverance, Black-Owned starts with the first Black-owned bookstore, which an abolitionist opened in New York in 1834, and after the bookshop’s violent demise, Black book-lovers carried on its cause. In the twentieth century, civil rights and Black Power activists started a Black bookstore boom nationwide. Malcolm X gave speeches in front of the National Memorial African Book Store in Harlem—a place dubbed “Speakers’ Corner”—and later, Black bookstores became targets of FBI agents, police, and racist vigilantes. Still, stores continued to fuel Black political movements.
Amid these struggles, bookshops were also places of celebration: Eartha Kitt and Langston Hughes held autograph parties at their local Black-owned bookstores. Maya Angelou became the face of National Black Bookstore Week. And today a new generation of Black activists is joining the radical bookstore tradition, with rapper Noname opening her Radical Hood Library in Los Angeles and several stores making national headlines when they were overwhelmed with demand in the Black Lives Matter era. As Adams makes clear, in an time of increasing repression, Black bookstores are needed now more than ever.
Full of vibrant characters and written with cinematic flair, Black-Owned is an enlightening story of community, resistance, and joy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former NBC News journalist Adams debuts with an illuminating history of America's Black-owned bookstores. She begins with Black abolitionist David Ruggles, whose Tribeca shop, opened in 1834, established a template that many Black booksellers would follow: prioritizing community and politics. From there Adams tracks how different store owners' political convictions shaped their approach to art and activism over time; along the way, she makes professional associations and book distribution into the stuff of riveting drama. In discussing radical bookshops that emerged in the 1960s, for example, she outlines how they were spied on by COINTELPRO operatives (in at least one case, booksellers will be paranoid to hear, by a store "regular"). Later, in addressing existential challenges facing the Los Angeles bookstore Eso Won in the 1990s, she hints at disagreements within the city's Black community over which of its Black-owned bookstores was more legitimate, as some stores turned away from politics and embraced a more commercial mindset. She also touches on blockbuster Black authors, from W.E.B. DuBois to Angela Davis, and the history of the Black publishing industry. A final focus on a new generation of Black bookstore owners—along with a long list of shops all over the U.S.—makes for an invigorating conclusion. This will hold immense appeal for bibliophiles.
