The book is a celebration of spaces, past and present, where Black intellect, activism and community flourish.
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In the words of Toni Morrison: “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
Moved by Morrison’s wisdom, surprised by the absence of a comprehensive history of Black bookstores and ennobled with a foreword by the Nikki Giovanni, Katie Mitchell poured her heart — and her expertise in the Black literature canon — into Prose to the People: A Celebration of Black Bookstores.
“Black bookstores are as transformative as Black churches and Black colleges, but I saw that they were understudied,” Mitchell said. “I thought it was very ironic that the story of Black bookstores hadn’t been told in book form.”
More than just a retelling of history, though, Prose to the People is a hymn for the stores as anchors of Black culture and a love letter to its people. It’s an elegy for closed-down shops and shop owners now in the ancestral plane and a testament to cultural endurance, as younger generations now embrace bookstores in their own ways.
The wondrous collection of poems, essays, interviews, newspaper clippings, public records and collages of photographs and ephemera mimics a visit to a Black bookstore, Mitchell said.
“When you step into a bookstore, there are multiple authors, multiple genres. It’s colorful. You see artwork. You see the book covers,” she said. “I wanted to be very immersive. I wanted to transport the reader to these stores, and, for the ones that still exist, maybe encourage people to go when they’re in that area.”
Prose to the People is organized by region, spotlighting stores, owners, patrons and renowned visitors in “the Northeast,” “the DMV” (D.C., Maryland, Virginia), “the South,” “the Midwest” and “the West,” where Marcus Books, the nation’s oldest independent Black bookstore, resides in Oakland.
It’s no surprise that Atlanta plays a special role in such a history.
“Atlanta was what people were trying to emulate,” Mitchell said during a recent talk about the book at the Atlanta History Center. The event was moderated by author and Clark Atlanta University professor Daniel Black.
Mitchell shared one story of Emma Rogers, who owned Book Bazaar in Dallas. It was the biggest Black bookstore in the U.S. for 30 years, she said. But to get started, Rogers took her cue from the Black bookstores across Atlanta.
“I think that’s really indicative of Atlanta’s place in the culture — ‘Atlanta influences everything’ truly means everything. I see [the network of bookstores] as a big Black family tree and Atlanta, in a lot of ways, is the root.”
The South chapter features bookstores in New Orleans; Houston; Little Rock; Jackson, Mississippi; Raleigh, North Carolina; and other cities. Profiles from Atlanta include Nia Damali’s Medu Bookstore in Greenbriar Mall; The Shrine of the Black Madonna Cultural Center and Bookstore; Cheryl and Warren Lee’s 44th & 3rd Booksellers (both in the West End); Rosa Duffy’s For Keeps Books in Sweet Auburn; and acclaimed photographer Jim Alexander’s First World Bookstores, which grew into four locations from 1988 to 1994.
Aminika Convington, manager at The Shrine, which is celebrating 50 years, said Prose to the People “means we are seen and acknowledged for the role that we play in our community. It’s special to be part of this story — part of a movement.”
While the book is a sprawling history, it also features a list for further exploration of bookstores that are not individually profiled and where to find them.
Beyond being simply Black-owned, Black bookstores distinctively center Black authors and themes and are often safe havens for Black gatherings, activism, organizing and resources. So when many started seeing decline — from big-box stores and the digital eclipse to rising costs of running and housing a business — the loss was profound. Some added coffee and pastries or other retail. Some used their own money from other jobs to fill the voids. Some simply couldn’t survive the changing world.
But Mitchell’s use of essays, especially curated poetry and one-on-one interviews ensures that those stories are not lost.
“I wanted to include community members who have their own relationships with Black bookstores — to tap into their lived experiences and let them fill out the book in a way that I know I couldn’t do alone,” she said.
In just about every bookstore Mitchell visited, shining stories about Giovanni, from the Black Arts Movement era to her death in December, came up.
“I saw that pattern again and again, so I knew she deserved to have the first word in the first book about Black bookstores,” Mitchell said. “I only knew her as a fan of her work, not a personal relationship, but when she accepted my proposal, she was so gracious and was thanking me for being a part of this project. It really showed me what it means to be a good elder — to reach back and give back to people who look up to you.”
That kind of communion is a defining characteristic of the bookstores.
“Black bookstores are run by Black people, and what do Black people do?” Mitchell said. “We feed each other. We teach each other. We watch the babies for each other. We send care packages. We give a good word [of prayer] like The Shrine did for me.”
And Black bookstores are a blueprint for moments of political turmoil.
Harassment by violent white mobs and arson stretch back to an abolitionist David Ruggles bookstore in the 1830s, and the FBI’s COINTELPRO surveillance and other permutations came later, as detailed in the book. Amid the ongoing stifling of Black voices, banning of books in schools and the rampant erasure of cultural histories by the same authoritarian forces that outlawed reading for the enslaved, the marginalized can look to Black bookstores for answers.
“We see this regression, this animosity toward Black people and our literature, or just Black thought in general, but we’ve been here before, unfortunately,” Mitchell said. “In the pages of Prose, there are lessons that our elders and ancestors have given us on how to respond to what’s going on right now.”
Black books are a foundational part of Mitchell’s life blueprint as well. Her love for them was nurtured by her mother, Katherine, whose elegant handwriting is used in the dedication and as pull quotes throughout the pages.
As a child, Mitchell was spared from doing chores at home. Her main task, as well as her brother’s, was reading and often reciting poetry by the likes of Giovanni and Langston Hughes. The book’s title is a callback to Hughes’ “poetry to the people” philosophy of writing to and about everyday Black folks and often performing for free.
Mitchell treasures growing up in a “two-person book club,” with her mother, which in 2019 grew into their joint venture, Good Books. The online bookstore features mostly vintage Black books and hosts pop-ups around the city.
“We’re trying to get people back to that love of reading that they may have lost or introduce people to authors and books they aren’t familiar with,” Mitchell said. “We say all Black books are good books, so that’s the criteria. And the Black experience is so varied that there’s something for everybody.”
Mitchell jokes that she was so enamored with Black literature, she thought Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison — her mother’s favorite author — were her aunties. Mitchell was a child in a time when literary depictions of Black children were becoming more common.
“She could see herself in those books and she thrived from there,” Katherine Mitchell said. “This gives seeing herself [in a book] a new meaning. I know how much work she put into it, and I am so proud of her.”
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Angela Oliver is a proud native of old Atlanta who grew up in the West End. A Western Kentucky University journalism and Black studies grad, daily news survivor and member of Delta Sigma Theta, she works in the grassroots nonprofit world while daydreaming about seeing her scripts come alive on the big screen.
