Black Librarians/Spirit Guides 🖤⭐️📚
Joan Spencer, Mildred Handy, Mollie Houston Lee, Beatrice Hamlin, and Maude Young
Richard B Harris Community Library staff, 1968
photo courtesy Wake County Libraries 👸🏾🤩📚
4 years ago today, I took 100 books by Black women and set them up on a brownstone stoop in Brooklyn. I danced in honor of the sacred beauty, brilliance and creativity that Black women bring and let my community know I was starting a small social art project known as The Free Black Women’s Library. I was nervous AF, I had been sitting on the idea for months unsure if I had the time, capability, and bandwidth to make it happen.
I am a single mother, freelance artist with limited funds, also a loner, extremely shy, introverted, prone to bouts of severe depression, but I was sick of seeing Black womanhood attached to struggle, pain, trauma, victimhood, criminality, violence, poverty, ugliness, incompetence, so much negativity attached to our existence.
I knew different, I felt different and wanted to show proof to myself and my community, so I jumped in and said phuck it, what’s the worse that will happen? People will think, I’m crazy or weird, - that ain’t nothing new.
Black women’s words have saved my life, healed me, nurtured me and provided me with the comfort that I’ve needed in every rough moment of my life and I wanted to share that fact/testimony. I did my first official book swap that day and the rest as they say is history.
Here I am now with a collection of 1200 with branches forming across the country!! 🙌🏿💓⭐️☺️
I had no idea what would happen next, the journey has been both good, tiring, educational, inspiring and complicated. 😂
Thanks to those who show support and love. Extra special love and shout out to all the Patreon subscribers and those that send me books!! You are my angels!!! ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️
The financial support you give is needed and deeply appreciated!! This project gets zero funding outside of you!!! I love you for helping me keep this thing going!!
Happy Birthday to us!! 💓💓
“No women who chooses to be self loving ever regrets her choice” - COMMUNION/THE FEMALE SEARCH FOR LOVE by bell books
Happy Hump Day BBs, I know I haven’t posted in a while, thanks for still being here. I’ve been working really hard and also having some health challenges, I decided to revisit this beautiful book by bell hooks this past weekend while nursing my body, I wanted to re-examine my views on self love and relationships in a way that was challenging but also felt compassionate.
This book is gold and one of the few self help books I would actually recommend cause it takes patriarchy to task and helps to establish feminism as a foundation for self care and a self loving practice.
I’m sure you all already know that everything is political including the way we love ourselves and others. I appreciate her speaking to women in a way that is frank and plain, and she actually got me believing in love again.
Imagine that 😝😝
It’s the third part in a series of books in which Love is the theme and I feel all three are just required reading for Black folks (all folks actually) interested in building healthy relationships and healthy communities.
Book one is - ALL ABOUT LOVE, book two is SALVATION, and this one COMMUNION directed to women specifically is book three. I know bell hooks has been problematic in some ways but I still lean into her work often when it comes to self inquiry and radical feminist thought.
Also I am fascinated by how my perspective shifts based on who I’m loving and how I’m being loved, my goal is to consistently generate love in my life, no matter what is happening, be able to freely give and receive it in multiple ways. It’s a liberating practice that takes work and creativity.
Thank Goddess for books that help to guide the vibration 🖤
Heading to the post office to mail off a stack of my limited edition TFBWL Riso prints ordered via Instagram!! Excited that folks are feeling my printmaking adventures and experiments!! More to come 🙌🏾☺️🙌🏾
By the way for those who are wondering the woman in the photo is of librarian Rubye Ballard. 🖤🖤
“A library at night is full of sounds: the unread books can’t stand it any longer and announce their contents, some boasting, some shy, some devious. But the sound I heard wasn’t the sound of a book. It was more like a suppressed cough or sneeze, or a clearing of the throat, or some conclusive, impulsive mix of the three. Everything became very still even the books shut up. I looked at the shelf directly in front of me; I read each title on it, spine after spine there was a gap between the spines into eyes that looked out of it.” - WHAT IS YOURS IS NOT YOURS by Helen Oyeyemi
I love some of the strange spooky little stories in this book so much. 💕👀📚
My Patreon Page is up!!
Happy June Bbs!!
I have started a Patreon page for those who would like to become a part of making The Free Black Women’s Library more sustainable.
Although this project is a sincere labor of love it is also time consuming and costly to maintain so I’m inviting you to invest in its growth and success.
All patrons will receive access to lots of fun nerdy artsy content related to Black women’s literature which will include top notch book lists, monthly audio or video book discussions and reviews, writing prompts, author interviews, artsy merchandise, audio and video readings, lesson plans/workshops for scholars and educators, and anything else my mind dreams up.
You can subscribe and have access to all the content for a little as two dollars a month!!
My goal is to gather enough subscriptions that add up to $1500 a month.
All funds will be used to cover the cost of the mobile Library’s transportation, storage rental, labor and administrative support.
Please feel free to share the link with others who might be interested!
Thank you so much!!
LINK - - - > https://www.patreon.com/TFBWL
“You know, we are the daughters of Ida B. Wells. We’re the daughters of every Black woman who has been a leader - Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and all the millions of unnamed warriors. All the millions of unnamed ones. We are in a long line. We’re just calling it- we’re calling it what it is now - Black feminism is a representation of Black women’s power. Black women’s agency. Black women’s right to look at their material conditions, analyze it, interrogate it, and come away with an analysis that’s about empowerment.” - Demita Frazier/HOW WE GET FREE : Black Feminism and The Combahee River Collective edited by Keeanga - Yamahtta Taylor 🖤⭐️🖤⭐️