In Black-Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore, Char Adams promises her readers “vivid stories a person could get lost in” and she delivers. The book charmingly recounts the storied history of America’s Black literary commercial and community spaces, with everyone from Toni Morrison to Terry McMillan to Talib Kweli casually strolling through its pages. This streamlined, novelistic read belies Adams’ no-stone-unturned research and extensive original interviews.
The book’s ambitious structure echoes Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns: Adams takes readers through the different eras of the Black bookstore, showing its evolution over the last seven decades (plus a slavery-era prequel). Thus the characters work not just as individuals but as emblems of their time.
In the Black power era of the late 1960s, for example, when shops often doubled as activist centers, Martin Sostre envisioned his Afro-Asian Bookshop in Buffalo, New York as a training ground for “freedom fighters.” Entrepreneur Clara Villarosa, by contrast, embodies the 1980s so vividly you can almost see the power suits and shoulder pads. She opened Denver’s Hue-Man Experience after hitting the glass ceiling in corporate banking, and came armed with a business and marketing plan.
Adams tactfully negotiates the tradeoffs each generation made. The 1980s brought an “upward mobility” that arguably sacrificed some of the earlier militancy. Black bookshops flourished as the whole “Black book ecosystem” boomed: a burst of small presses and distributors, mainstream attention to Black authors, and even a growing presence in the American Booksellers Association, organizing not just amongst themselves but with a larger national alliance.
The industry built on this success in the 1990s, the “golden age of bookselling,” exemplified by Oprah Winfrey’s book club. Books anointed on Oprah’s talk show saw a stratospheric sales explosion that one author likened to “winning the lottery.”
But even as Black bookshops thrived, so did their competitors. Chain stores (remember Waldenbooks?) lured business away from independents, offering impossible-to-match discounts and colluding with major publishers. Meanwhile, a little-known internet bookseller named Amazon came onto the scene, luring customers out of physical stores altogether.
So 21st century Black booksellers require exceptional innovation in order to survive. This contemporary generation brings activism and business together in a way that skirts the debates of their predecessors; to them, the work is all of a piece. As Black Lives Matter pushed America to grapple with its racial injustice, Black booksellers provided the needed reading material, even pivoting to mail-order during Covid. As haters tried to ban books, the storefronts served as safe havens.
Indeed, looked at another way, this book is a biography, not of a single person but of a movement, or at the very least a movement strategy: the Black bookstore. As Adams puts it, “Black-owned bookstores have reclaimed their place not simply as a part of Black culture but as a centerpiece of Black resistance.”
As such, this book raises larger questions of movement sustainability: How do we keep a dream alive over the decades if not centuries? How do we stay true to our vision while also adapting to our times and continuing to evolve? Where do we compromise? What do we prioritize?
Along these lines, Adams “purposefully” doesn’t define “Black bookstore.” She uses it to mean a store that is both Black-owned and “specializes in books by and about Black people”; ideally, it checks both boxes. However, she deliberately uses “Black” and “Black-owned” interchangeably. She honors that many booksellers must decide what to sell given what will sell – again, compromising aspects of the vision in exchange for keeping the vision alive.
The future of the Black bookstore might look different than what we’re used to. It might be a temporary popup, or a bookmobile passing through, or a lending library displaying its wares on a stoop, or even a purely digital space. But the resilience and passion displayed in this history all but assure the existence of this future, whatever its form.
Infobox
The book contains a list of national Black bookstores. Here are the ones it lists in our fair city.
BRONX
The Bronx is Reading (Online and pop-up)
131 Alexander Ave.
BROOKLYN
115 Ralph Ave.
315 Smith St.
1021 Cortelyou Road
MANHATTAN
84 W. 120th St.
The Schomburg Shop (Located inside the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
515 Malcolm X. Blvd.
1942 Amsterdam Ave.
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