The Free Black Women's Library

[The Free Black Women's Library]

“We don’t have to walk around feeling powerless or angry or rejected. We don’t have to fight others or defend against life for fear of suffering. Clearing out mind clutter makes more space for expression of our real selves. Acceptance - as a transformative response to life in general, and emotions in particular - is a useful tool to move this process along. As a response to an emotion, acceptance can be a challenging concept to grasp. Letting feelings be feelings, rather than thinking that feelings are facts, can bring you to the present moment. Bringing Presence to the moment, or bringing yourself into the now moment, is where all the power lies, and where nothing else can prevail.” ⭐️💓

IMAGINE THIS is a deeply inspiring guide to accessing your own individual wellspring of creativity. In this powerfully affecting book, which is part memoir part practical how to, award winning writer and teacher Maxine Clair uses personal stories from her own remarkable life and literary journey to illustrate how you too can discover your own creative abilities and find satisfaction in what you do. This book offers encouraging mantras, affirmations, writing prompts, creative exercises and personal anecdotes to access, encourage and engage the spirit of expression that lives within all of us. It offers insight on how to recognize your needs, follow your heart, trust your inspiration, stay motivated and find fulfillment through the work you love. A great read for artists, writers, creatives and all others looking for insight on how to sustain the essence of who they are 🌸♥️

[The Free Black Women's Library]

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!! 💓💓

[The Free Black Women's Library]

In the port town of La Pointe in Guadeloupe, Reynalda, a pregnant teenager is rescued from drowning by a local cook who raises her and the daughter she bears. Reynalda had run away from her mother, Nina, and the unsavory Italian jeweler for whom she kept the house. The child, Marie-Noelle is scarcely noticed by her mother, who soon leaves for a job in Paris. It is the harsh and beautiful island of Desirada where Reynalda was born, and where Nina’s hermetic mother still lives, which may hold the key to Marie Noelle’s identity and the reason her mother abandoned her. Her journey leads to America and redemption as she pursues an education so that she can invent her own life.

In the award winning 1998 book DESIRADA Maryse Conde has created a beautiful, unflinching portrait of several generations of women who must overcome much suffering to find themselves. It is as lush and powerful as anything she has written. 💙💛♥️

My next read for The Free Black Women’s Library Reading Challenge, this is book number 12 for me - how many books by Black women have you read this year?

[The Free Black Women's Library]

“Black women have worked hard to write a counternarrative of our worth in a global system where beauty is the only legitimate capital allowed women without legal, political, and economic challenge. That last bit is important. Beauty is not good capital. It compounds the oppression of gender. It constrains those who identify as women against their will. It costs money and demands money. It colonizes. It hurts. It is painful. It can never be fully satisfied. It is not useful for human flourishing. Beauty is, like all capital, merely valuable. Because it is valuable, black women have said that we are beautiful too. We have traveled the cultural imaginations of the worlds nonwhite people assembling a beauty construct that does not exclude us. We create culture with our beauty. We negotiate with black men to legitimize our beauty. We try to construct something that feels like liberation in an inherently oppressive regime, balancing peace with our marginally more privileged lighter skinned black women while refuting the global caste status of darker skinned black women. Some of us try to include multiple genders and politics in our definition of beauty. This kind of work requires discursive loyalty. We must name it and claim it, because naming is about the only unilateral power we have.” - In The Name of Beauty ⭐️👌🏿

Re-reading some of my favorite passages from the awesome book, THICK AND OTHER ESSAYS written by the brilliant Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom - in excitement and anticipation of this month’s meetup, which features the author, scholar and professor discussing her writing and work. Happening on Sunday, June 30th at MOCADA museum. The Free Black Women’s Library will be open from noon to 5, and our conversation begins at 2p. All are welcome to come check out and trade books by Black women and take part in the conversation. See you then!! I’m so excited!! 🙌🏿🙌🏿🙌🏿🙌🏿☺️☺️☺️☺️

[The Free Black Women's Library]

Thank you so much to the folks at Simon & Schuster for sending me an advanced readers copy of THESE GHOSTS ARE FAMILY by Maisy Card. It always feels extra special to receive a book before the rest of the world, it’s like a secret literary treasure I get to learn about before it’s officially unveiled. This debut novel from the writer and librarian, which is scheduled to be released in the Spring of 2020, already had me intrigued by its title and pretty cover, discovering the author is a also a librarian is just extra icing on the cake.

Looking forward to reading this 💓📚👌🏿

[The Free Black Women's Library]

Thank you so much to Beth Boose who sent me a gorgeous pair of books from The Free Black Women’s Library Amazon wish list!!!

Much swooning over these two fresh beauties recently received, BLACK FEMINISM REIMAGINED by Jennifer C. Nash and one of my favorite reads of the year THICK AND OTHER ESSAYS by Tressie McMillan Cottom our featured author for June!!!!!!

Thank you thank you thank you This is serendipity and connection, we are going to dive into the brilliance of Thick with Dr. Cottom on June 30th at MOCADA Museum 🙌🏿🙌🏿🙌🏿🙌🏿🙌🏿.

Save the date!!

I sighed when both of these books showed up!! So so good ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

please feel free to continue sending us Black women’s books that serve us deep nerdy critical text that examines the beauty, power and complications of race and gender. Classic and New ☺️

The address is : TFBWL, 1072 Bedford Avenue, box 39 Brooklyn NY 11216 👌🏿⭐️👏🏿

[The Free Black Women's Library]

THEY WERE HER PROPERTY - White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E. Jones - Rogers

Bridging women’s history, the history of the South, and African-American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E Jones-Rodgers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South’s slave market. Because women typically inherited more slaves than land, enslaved people were often their primary source of wealth. Not only did white women offer refused to cede ownership of their slaves to their husbands, they employed management techniques that were as effective and brutal as those used by slaveowning men. White women actively participated in the slave market, profited from it, and used

it for economic and social empowerment. By examining the economically entangled lives of enslaved people and slaved owning women, Jones Rodgers presents a narrative that forces us to rethink economic and social conventions of slaveholding America. 👌🏿🖤

This book will be on our wish list forever. I stan for Black women scholars/historians.

Thank you so much to @ellenoiseann and fam for sending me this!!!

Feel free to send brilliant impeccably researches books by Black women history scholars to TFBWL, 1072 Bedford Avenue, box 39, Brooklyn, NY 11216.

You can also support the library by becoming a patron though Patreon, all money goes towards the growth and sustainability of this project. Thank you!!!

[The Free Black Women's Library]

That blessed moment when the parents of your grad school homey @ellenoiseann finds out about your Black Feminist literary project and send you two gorgeous hardcover brand spanking new brilliant and very important books by Black women authors. Aye Aye!!!

One of my must reads of the year, THEY WERE HER PROPERTY : White women as Slaveowners in the American South by historian and scholar Dr. Stephanie E. Jones- Rogers and QUEENIE, the vibrant debut from Candice Carty-WIlliams. ⭐️💥🧡

Excited to add these to the 2 beauties to the collection, they are winners!!

Please feel free to send brilliant works by Black women to TFBWL, 1072 Bedford Avenue, box 39, Brooklyn, NY 11216.

You can also support the library by becoming a patron through our Patreon.

Funds go towards transportation of books, library supplies, rental of P.O. box, and other random incidentals.

I am endlessly grateful for all the amazing support and love this project has received!! 🧡♥️🖤

[The Free Black Women's Library]

This Traveling Library Is Ensuring Black Literature "Has the Place It Deserves"

"Connecting with people over books is something that always felt really good."

Oprah Magazine

Thank you much to CiCi Adams for writing this gorgeous thoughtful piece on The Free Black Women’s Library for O, The Oprah Magazine!!