#thefreeblackwomenslibrary

[thefreeblackwomanslibrary]

Some highlights from our Reading Room weekends include :

⭐️ Book lovers of all ages stopping by to check out the collection and trade good books written by Black women & Black non-binary folks with us!! 📚☺️

⭐️ a good amount of T-shirt and merchandise sales to friends and neighbors cha-ching 👌🏿💰

⭐️ The most adorable cuties patooties stopping by for story time and having fun in our children’s reading nook 💖💖

⭐️ installing our ancestral wall of Black Feminist/Womanist muses which is slowly but surely coming together. 🕯🙏🏿

The Free Black Women’s Library is a social art project that centers/celebrates the brilliance, creativity and diversity of Black women and Black non binary writers. This initiative currently features a collection of five thousand books ranging from memoir to mystery!!

The library also features a wide array of free public programming that Includes workshops, readings, film screenings, performances & literary conversations.

The library works through a trading system where for every GOOD book you bring you get to take a book as long as it’s written by a Black woman or Black non-binary person. The books don’t have to be new but they have to be good!! 🤨📚😉

All ages, races and genders are welcome to stop by our new Reading Room space open Wednesdays/Thursdays from 1 to 5, Saturdays/Sundays from 1 to 6.

226 Marcus Garvey Blvd, Brooklyn NYC

You are welcome to come and read, write, work, rest, reflect, dream and connect in this space during our open hours. Stay a minute or stay all day!!

We trade books on weekends specifically!!

This is a grassroots community project funded by my Patreon patrons and GoFundme donors!! Words cannot express how grateful I am for their financial contributions to this work, plainly speaking without them none of this would be possible!!

Links to the merch store, Patreon community and Gofundme page are in my IG bio!! Thank you!!

[kiyannasquotebook]

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A post shared by Kiyanna Shanay (@kiyannaloves)

[trascapades]

📚#ArtIsAWeapon Remembering author, anthropologist, southern Black life storyteller, trailblazer #ZoraNealeHurston, who was born January 7, 1891.

#ZoraNealeHurstonDay

📷 photograph by #CarlVanVechten .

Caption and images reposted from @thefreeblackwomenslibrary It’s Zora Neale Hurston Day ⭐️🖤⭐️

Are you familiar with the life and writing of this legendary free thinking world traveling rule breaking culture defining Black woman icon?

Which one of her novels have you read and enjoyed?

Today we celebrate the birth of a chosen ancestor, spirit guide and muse of The Free Black Women’s Library, also a quintessential Capricorn and role model for Black girl scholars researchers historians anthropologists story tellers and mean muggers world wide!!

Cheers to the goat!!

🖤🖤🖤 🎂🎂🎂🐐🐐🐐🥂🥂🥂

BTW!!!

for those doing The Free Black Women’s Library Reading Challenge feel free to read

THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD for - a book where the characters speak Geechee, Gullah, Creole, patois or AAVE

BARRACOON - a book of history , historical fiction or slave narrative

HITTING A STRAIGHT LICK WITH A CROOKED STICK - collection of stories, poems, letters or prose

DUST TRACKS ON THE ROAD - a memoir

#zoranealehurston

#freeblackwoman

#TFBWL

#tfbwlreads

#tfbwlreadingchallenge

#thefreeblackwomenslibrary #TheirEyesWereWatchingGod #Barracoon #FreeBlackWomensLibrary #HarlemRenaissance #BlackWomenAuthors #BlackGenius

[christenclifford]

It’s great Artforum gave Curriculum:spaces of learning and unlearning a Critic’s Pick! - @thefreeblackwomenslibrary- is making sure everyone is reading the work of black women. It takes up a large central space in the gallery and is a library of books by black women. The gold satin paint on the bookshelves and benches gives the materials a sense of the richness- to me wealth is the ability to buy books. The color echoes the richness of the words, and Ola is leading reading groups in the space. Check the @efaprojectspace Website for details. The library contains everything from Terry McMillan to bell hooks and books can be exchanged. @januaryhunt ‘s bathroom installation is at once terrifying and soothing, and explicitly references her trans body. Sound, strobe, a deconstructed bathroom - if you use it the seat isn’t on the base of the toilet, the soap is out of its dispenser. It’s dark, there are flashing lights and It is one of, if not the most, challenging piece in the exhibit. I love these spaces of learning and unlearning. Come see our show! #contemporaryart #curriculumspacesoflearningandunlearning #thefreeblackwomenslibrary #olaronkeakinmowo #januaryhunt #art https://www.instagram.com/p/BufRDR1lojH/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1dhh2gd4o3b21

[lisaeharris]

Here it is! Repost from @wpadc • TOMORROW! The Closing Discussion for ‘Black Women as/and the Living Archive’ with artist-curator @tsedaye featuring @alishabwormsley @lisaeverything @maisonlafleur @jamilaraegan @thefreeblackwomenslibrary @autkni @jasminehearncollaborates. Saturday, June 13 from 6-8pm EST. LINK IN BIO ❤️ . #alishawormsley #ingridlafleur #lisaeharris #autumnknight #jamilaraegen #olaronke #jasminehearn #tsedayemakonnen #jordanmartin #thereareblackpeopleinthefuture #afrofuturism #thefreeblackwomenslibrary #fbwl #memory #archive #film #library #blackmotherhood #Blackwomenartists #performanceart #dance #movement #scifi #nkjemisin #pleasureactivism #childrenofnan . . Design by @rheagenk // 📷 by @alishabwormsley & @jamilaraegan https://www.instagram.com/p/CBWlbJ0JM8o/?igshid=8wqp34g8uccp

[teawithqueenandj]

Today it’s a Podcast God’s birth day!! Give all your love to @janiciaf today. ❤️✊🏾💚🧚🏾‍♀️🧚🏾‍♀️ #teawithqj #bday #happybdaytome #podcastgod #monday #thefreeblackwomenslibrary

[tawanakwatson]

Just downloaded this to my kindle cant wait to read it #TFBWL2019 #thefreeblackwomenslibrary https://www.instagram.com/p/B0vsOwDg-pM/?igshid=1c2s6pgm0qcos

[faeriedustdesign]

The Free Black Women’s Library - 2017 Reading Challenge

The brilliance and imagination of Black women knows no bounds, join me in reading 26 books by Black women this year as follows:

A book from your childhood

A book you had to read in school  

A book by a Caribbean author

A book by an African author

A romance or erotica novel

A memoir or autobiography

A Black feminist/womanist text

An urban fiction story

An Afro Futurist novel (Science Fiction/ Speculative/ Fantasy/Horror)

A collection of poetry or short stories

A book based in spirituality, religion or sacred ideology

A YA novel

A book classified as self help, personal development focusing on things like pleasure, self-care, finances, health, life strategy

A recipe book (attempt to cook 1 to 3 items)

Any book by Toni Morrison

Any book by Alice Walker

Any book by Zora Neale Hurston

Any book by Octavia Butler

A book that would be classified as “Chick Lit”

A book from 100 years ago

A book classified as LGBTQ via its author or content

A book that came out in the last year

A book set in your hometown

A book with a one word title

A book with a person’s name in the title

A book that is (or became) a play or film

 Please tag The Free Black Women’s Library in your photos of the books you have chosen and use the hashtags –

#TheFreeBlackwomensLibrary #TFBWLReadingChallenge #TFBWL #26BlackWomen #TFBWL26 #BlackWomanBibliophile

[africandiasporaphd]

🖤🖤🖤 #Repost @thefreeblackwomenslibrary • • • • • • The Free Black Women's Library Just added to TFBWL wish list, WICKED FLESH, Black Women, Intimacy & Freedom in the Atlantic World written by historian & professor Jessica Marie Johnson, gorgeous cover design by Delita Martin. This one looks & sounds AMAZING. 💙🖤💙🖤💙 The story of freedom pivots on the choices Black women need to retain control over their bodies and souls, their loved ones, and their futures. The story of freedom and all of its ambiguities begins with intimate acts steeped in power. It is shaped by the peculiar oppression faced by African women and women of African dissent. And it pivots on the self-conscious choices Black women made to retain control. Slavery’s rise in the Americas was institutional, carnal, and reproductive. The intimacy of bondage whet the appetite of slaveholders, traders, and colonial officials with fantasies of domination that trickled into every social relationship, - husband and wife, sovereign and subject, master and laborer. Intimacy - corporeal, carnal, quotidian - tied slaves to slave owners, women of African descent and their children to European and African men. In Wicked Flesh Johnson explores the nature of these complicated intimate and kinship ties and how they were used by Black women to construct freedom in the Atlantic world. Johnson draws on archival documents scattered in institutions across three continents, written in multiple languages and largely from the perspective of colonial officials and slave owning men to recreate Black women’s experiences from coastal Senegal to French Saint Domingue to Spanish Cuba to the swampy outpost of the Gulf Coast. Centering New Orleans as the quintessential site for investigating black women’s practices of freedom in the Atlantic world, this book argues that African women and women of African dissent and out free status with meaning to active, aggressive, and sometimes unsuccessful intimate and kinship practices. Their stories, in both their successes and their failures, outlined a practice of freedom that laid the groundwork for the emancipation struggles of the 19th century and reshaped the New World. Congrats to https://instagr.am/p/CDWCGl1ATcy/ Follow #ADPhD on IG: @afrxdiasporaphd

[anniekoh]

archival politics and libraries as liberation

I believe all NY Public Libraries are closed due to coronavirus... so this event may be already postponed.

Borrowed Live: Alternative Libraries Sat, Mar 14 2020    9:00pm  Brooklyn Public Library

Join us for a live recording of Borrowed, BPL’s flagship podcast, as we talk about alternative libraries, and what traditional libraries often leave out.

The mission of Interference Archive (Brooklyn, NY) is to explore the relationship between cultural production and social movements. As an archive from below, we are a collectively run space that is people powered, with open stacks and accessibility for all. As an all-volunteer organization, all members of our community are welcome and encouraged to shape our collection and programming. We produce publications alongside a variety of public programming including exhibitions, workshops, talks, and screenings, all of which encourage critical and creative engagement with the history of social movements.

OlaRonke Akinmowo is an inter-disciplinary artist, set decorator, yoga teacher, and single mother from Brooklyn, NY. She is also the Creator and Director of  The Free Black Women’s Library, a literary social art project that features a collection of over 2000 books written by Black women as well as workshops, presentations, book talks, performances and radical conversations. This mobile library pops up monthly in free public spaces throughout all of NYC (and sometimes outside of NYC) and runs on the give a book take a book model. Follow @thefreeblackwomenslibrary on social media for details about upcoming pop ups, collaborations and special events.

Kameelah Janan Rasheed (b. 1985, East Palo Alto CA and based in Brooklyn, NY) is an artist and learner seeking to make her thinking visible through an ecosystem of iterative projects such as “architecturally-scaled collages,” (Frieze Magazine, Winter 2018), poems/poetic gestures/words in the proximity of poems, long-form essays, publications, large-scale public works, digital archives, teaching, curriculum development, lecture performances, stand-up comedy, and other forms yet to be determined. In 2019, Rasheed was the 2019 Katowitz Radin Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Public Library and created the interactive art exhibition, "Scoring the Stacks."

[kiyannasquotebook]

Birthday weekend reads 📖✨ #currentlyreading this gem again, reclaiming fierce and unapologetic self love -- for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange 💜🌈 Basking in my solar return and the gifts I pray come with finding greater harmony with my spirit while satisfying my 14th book for #tfbwlreadingchallenge - a book that is a play of film. I'm watching the play on DVD this week as well. "i found god in myself and I loved her. I loved her fiercely." . . . ✨ ✨ ✨ #blackwomanbibliophile #thefreeblackwomenslibrary #bookstagram #bookworm #bookquotes #booksofinstagram #wellreadblackgirl #readinglist #goodblackreads #bookstagrammer #solarreturn #qotd #selflove #forcoloredgirlswhohaveconsideredsuicidewhentherainbowisenuf #ntozakeshange

[trascapades]

❤️#ArtIsAWeapon

#NewExhibition

Congratulations Crystal @tabascofour!! I am so excited to finally see your latest labor of love @themdearproject!

#MyFriendsAreDope

Reposted from @themdearproject / @tabascofour ✨Join Us! ✨

OPENING RECEPTION✨

This Friday May 5th. Doors open 12pm ~ Cocktail Reception 3pm - 6pm.✨

I can’t wait for you to experience M’DEAR: Exploring the Black Maternal ✨Join Us!

I’m thrilled and excited to share my upcoming exhibition, ‘M’Dear: Exploring The Black Maternal’ curated for MoCADA, The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts @mocada_museum opening this Friday, May 5th at the MoCADA House on Governor’s Island in NYC! The exhibit runs May 5 - Oct. 29 every Friday through Sunday!!!✨

I’m humbled and so grateful for all my amazing Black women artists that trusted me with your exquisite work honoring the power of the great Mother - the Matriarch- the ever present Black maternal principle centered prominently throughout the African diaspora.

Right on time for Mother’s Day to be enjoyed throughout the entire summer or fall!

Join us for few events & activations ~ all M’Dear approved ✨✨

Come on home to M’Dear’s house (MoCADA House) and let mother dear, madear, madea, big momma, lil mama, abuela, bibi, grandma, great grandma, gram, granni, mama, mommy, love up on you, whisper to you, guide you, council you, inspire you, encourage you, feed you, get with you and remind you of Who you are and Whom you belong to. ✨😘✨

Link in bio.

Deep Deep Bow to my Ahhmazing M’DEAR Artists ~

@sadeelharlem @dreavisionart @nickywoophoto @srhea89306 @lavettballardarts @armiseysmith @saudiasjones @artistdaniellescott

@waheedpix @djauniversal @rhonishadione @tabascofour @laurajamesart @artbystaceybillups

@khickmanphotography @jessicavaloris @kimberlymayhorn @thefreeblackwomenslibrary

@themdearproject

#TheMDearProject

#MDearTheBlackMaternal

#MDear #MoCADA #MoCADAHouse

#idontowncopyrightstothemusic

[damaliabrams]

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A post shared by Damali Abrams the Glitter Priestess (@damaliabrams)

Artist Talk, Closing Reception & Art Party Friday August 23, 2019 6:00 to 9:00 PM Blackburn 20/20 Gallery 323 West 39th Street, 5th Floor #NYC 🦄 Featuring work by: @thefreeblackwomenslibrary @khaliftahir @ayana.m.evans @damaliabrams Video: A little #candlemagic excerpt from my magical oil making video: Grow Your Hair, Grow Your Money. Part of my #installation in the exhibition, 4 Corners. 💞 #linkinbio to fb invite 💖 💌 💕 💓 ❤ 🍭 🌸 🌺 💃🏿 #mermaidlife #videoart #installationart #candles #art #artists #freeevent #artparty #Blackwomen #love #Divinefeminine #natural #healing #magic #locs #manifesting #conjuring #callingitin #GlitterPriestess #artexhibition #artexhibit #artistsbelike #fourcorners (at Blackburn 20/20 Studio) https://www.instagram.com/p/B1eRxlslGoX/?igshid=4kvc0gsbwmb4

[teawithqueenandj]

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A post shared by Tea with Queen & J. est.2014 (@teawithqj)

We did a two part review of #NappilyEverAfter with special guest @thefreeblackwomenslibrary and talked about sisterhood, community, natural hair journeys, desirability and why none of that was in the film. CLICK THE LINK IN THE BIO TO LISTEN TO THE FULL REVIEW! ❤️✊🏾💚 • #teawithqj #podcast #podsincolor #womanistracenerds #womanism #blackfeminism #listentoblackwomen #soundcloud #applepodcasts #stitcher #googleplay #tuneinapp #itunes #castbox #payblackwomen #googlepodcasts #naturalhair #bigchop #audiogram https://www.instagram.com/p/BocSEYXnQF4/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=yom5gbqszcjs

[clapbackqueensandkings]

Our #shero still making #HappyBlackHistory in this world. 👑🙌🏾 Repost from @thefreeblackwomenslibrary • “I think things happen in your life for a reason and you might not always understand it, but sometimes it’s the best thing for you.” “The artists are the truth keepers in our world.” D is for Debbie ♥️🖤💚🌹 Photoset includes Google sourced publicity promo photos. Videos sourced from Debbie Allen’s’ Instagram ♥️😏♥️😏♥️ - # #thejuneteenthproject #blackartmatters #blackartistaffirmed #reclaimblackexistence #reframeblacknarratives #affirmblacklife #blacklivesmatter #humanizeblacklives (at Bedstuy Brooklyn) https://www.instagram.com/p/CLpDWcwlTol/?igshid=wxha8vum6h9h