Jeannine A. Cook is the founder and owner of the bookshops Harriettโs, Idaโs, and Josephineโs. Her newest book, Shut Up and Read: A Memoir From Harriettโs Bookshop is out now.
When I opened Harriettโs Bookshop, I could have never predicted that my 500-square-foot shop would survive and thrive, even being featured in Vogue, The New York Times, and Essence. Or that, in just a few years, weโd expand our network of sister bookshops from Philadelphia to Paris. Or, most importantly, that our story would touch so many everyday people. But as you might expect from someone raised by a blind librarian, I understood the power of books.
On February 1, 2020, I opened Harriettโs, to celebrate women authors, artists, and activists. Americans typically learn about Harriett Tubman in the third gradeโhow she ran the underground railroad and freed the enslaved. But to me, she is more than a historic figure. Ms. Harriett has been my guide. If she could be a wade-through-waist-high-water-in-the-winter type woman, so could I. So could we!
At our opening in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia, people from all walks of life showed up in droves. Six weeks later, we received an email from the mayor that read โeffective immediately,โ shut the doors to your cute little bookshop and donโt open them again. With the deadly Covid outbreak came a racial uprising, threats on my life, wildfires, a war, and even the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 2020 was that type of year.
Despite all odds, Harriettโs has survived. We survived to serve customers worldwide. To build bookshops in unconventional places, from a train station to a horse barn. To distribute books to organizers at protests from Minneapolis to Louisville. To deliver books to children on horseback. We survived to write this memoir.
Still, I live in ever-present angst that our bookshops, all bookshops, will have to close someday if we donโt do something drastic. And quick. There are the book bans, the downward spiral in readership, and AI taking over every damn thing. In the face of all that, indie bookshop survival will take strategy and collective intentionality like a modern underground railroad. I believe the next leg of our journey is to remind our community to get on board despite the noise: Shut up and read.
English (US) · 