dear elizabeth

my flight has no wi-fi so it’s a great time to write you a letter processing some of my thoughts and ideas

i realize from the symposium and josephine’s and josephine the importance of starting things and trying things and inventing and failing and trying again

and in many ways this process of having a bookshop which is really just the process of starting and having an institution is so important so one can have a place to design, build, fail, innovate, engineer, share safely—like a science lab

not that individuals don’t have voices of course, but that when i was outside on the corner of broad and cecil b moore selling books or in front of the university of the arts selling books, very few saw that as noteworthy or important. no news articles lol

similarly when i was a school teacher, working daily with youth who were called dropouts, using art and culture as a tool to get them to come to school and work on their GEDs, it went virtually unnoticed

same thing when i was living in an abandoned house trying to finish my degree with a small child

but i believe it was in the process of starting and maintaining an institution, a lab, that i found the confidence to speak in rooms that one i never knew existed or two assumed i had no place in and/or three i wasn’t invited to

when i was selling books on the corner i was innovating—i created a place of beauty and community on a corner and sold books, sometimes more books than i sell at harriett’s or ida’s in a day, but also gave folk an open air place to congregate and chat and connect

when i was helping young people pass their GEDs by sitting with them in the hospital after they’d been drugged, or standing on tables teaching them about ntzoke shange, or hosting community dinners so i knew they ate dinner, or creating a citywide amazing race so they could see their city, or creating an entrepreneurial incubator and giving them seed money to fund their ideas, i was engineering, thinking about what pieces were missing, connecting nontraditional dots, designing and failing and redesigning—but who cared?

when i was writing the human rights curriculum for DC public schools and or conflict resolution curriculum for violence prevention, or racial reckoning curriculum for youth across the globe, i was just engineering —ideating, designing, implementing, failing, redesigning, rebuilding, over and over again…

but my own institution—untethered by the limitations imposed by predominately colonial-minded leadership, not having to beg to realize my ideas, accelerated  my ability to ideate and enact with speed.

i see this also in my other friends and colleagues who’ve had the experience of being able to start and run their own institutions and how much more social impact they’ve had not being under the boot of antiquated practices, antiquated leadership, antiquated belief systems, that tend to dominate many institutions and old regimes—even those who hire a DEI person or host an anti-racist training, change in those spaces is VERY difficult because the issues are built into the system, the design flaw is a part of the actual machine, it’s in the engine and to redesign those institutions would mean having to take them a part completely

without the boot of the old regime on your neck, without the overseer watching, it’s easier to design and build and fail and redesign and rebuild at your own pace. that’s what allows one to follow their gut and play the game of what if… what if there was a bookshop that was also kinda like a monument and kinda like art gallery? what if instead of one brick and mortar we had two?? what if instead of brick and mortars we starting having literary art installations? what if universities made us their school bookstore? what if we set forth legislation to make the first federal holiday named for a woman? what if we all existed locally and globally? what if we took people who never left their neighborhoods out of the country on book trips? what if large institutions “adopted” smaller ones? what if Paris? what if Nairobi? what if we’ve been thinking too small? what if we’ve been living our entire lives in a cage (either self imposed or socially imposed) and what if we just got out?

side note —no one bats an eye that amazon is a global institution, tesla is global, coca cola, kfc, mcdonald’s -global—but it’s like mind blowing when someone who looks like me or someone who comes from where i come from (the projects) creates work that’s global.

like i said to you earlier, i don’t want it to be shocking to see Blk girls from North Philly, Phillying up Paris, or Phillying up Nairobi, or Phillying up Mexico City, nor vice versa. i don’t want us waiting and waiting to see the world (and for the world to have to wait to see us) —that’s what Jo did, she allowed herself to be seen and heard —she opened that door so long ago —i’m sure she’s like just fly already

so i flew—overnight—for 3 days—i’ve never hosted a symposium, i didn’t fully know all that it takes, but what if we designed one and built one and failed and redesigned and rebuilt it until we got it to look like how we wanted it to look and feel how we wanted it to feel and what if there were more spaces for that in the world

because my professor, took that on with me as a project that i believe transformed us both and i don’t know if when i was in his class he could ever imagine all that would unfold from that brief interaction where he pushed me so hard as a writer and took me to gardens and made me read and excavate and analyze and write write write (i wrote an unpublished book in that class) that in a years time we’d be making history together at AUP, a university that has NEVER hosted a symposium dedicated to a woman who looks like you and has NEVER celebrated Blk women scholars, Blk women performers, Blk women media makers, and thinkers in this way—NEVER.

And did we fail at somethings?

definitely, the food (or lack there of was a total failure), but then i met jenea a Blk woman pastry chef who attended and agreed to cook next year, the bookshop lacking in books (which i tried to ship from the U.S. for hundreds of dollars and they still didn’t arrive in time was a failure—books across borders is hard hard hard)—i literally brought books in my carry on and clothes in my book bag—so now i know i need a european distributor and more used and rare more books

tech failures, time failures, financial failures —at one point i couldn’t pay for my taxi cause my card wouldn’t work, me with these stupid fevers that i keep getting—health failure, but who said we can’t fail? what’s this silly insistence on Blk excellence or bust that weighs folk down and makes it hard to invent and innovate because fear of failure keeps folk from beginning or finishing asking or taking risks

tech ventures get to fail all the time with millions of dollars of investment on the table, movies fail with million dollar budgets, governments fail everyday—don’t even get me started on the failures of the child welfare system, the health care system, the prison system, the mental health system, the education system…and they be failing with our money, then turn around and take more

where is that grace for the social engineer? the small business innovator? the activists? the organizers? the educators? the artists?

because after failure, if we do it right, there is the redesign, the  rebuild, the retry

so for our first time, i thought it was an awesome experience, i loved seeing the young folk physically build the shop in paris—40 minutes before the symposium was set to begin—because that’s when everything arrived, that’s who built harriett’s with me outside on the corner during the height of covid, thats who attended the protests with me and gave out books, that’s who sustains the work, it’s glorious to co-create with young minds who are full of energy.

i loved seeing my friends, like Brian, present in an academic setting, though he’s used to giving tours and cabarets

i loved having our matriarch, ms. sylvia come after 40 years of researching and writing and still she’s passing on history to young minds—40 years of dedication to sharing these stories about Blk women and Blk history, how could we ever repay her—all she wants is an english translation of her book

i loved having josephine baker’s daughter, Marianne next to me, saying how much she missed her mother, how loving she was, how many people get her mother wrong, how she’d come back every year if we’d keep hosting—build the bookshop she insisted to me in a heavy french accent

or young folk like Nia James presenting to other young folk like yo here’s an experimental thing i made where i let AI create a convo between Josephine Baker and James Baldwin—what do you think? and having folks question that and congratulate that

and having a dancer in the middle of a symposium, Bakering all over people to live music

or having a lifestyle fashionista say—here’s Baker as a Lifestyle—it’s ok to be Baker-esque—use the good plates, be your full self, enjoy the quality, take your time, connect at the boulangerie

or having a scholar share where she wants to take her Baker research next

having Blk music and Blk tradition take up space in places where we are typically told to keep quiet, be perfect, look but don’t touch, sit still, don’t disrupt, don’t make waves

and then dinner with my french friends and expat friends and american friends and students and graduates

there were many parts of the design that worked and many parts that get to be reworked but in all, i feel the path with no beginning is worth beginning and like i’ve said to the great mothers—i’ll do my part and i trust they will do theirs—and they always do

so glad you get to have paris and all these beautiful connections for your 50th birthday

with love

jeannine

My Sisters Gift Shop

This design for the Rosenbach is dedicated to the sisterhood between Rebecca and Miriam Rosenbach. Using the same 19th century furniture style but in pastel as a stark contrast to the other exhibits, this would be designed to feel feminine and soft with custom William Morris style wallpaper that includes their signatures as design elements. It is said that after the two sisters were both sick unto death, that older sister and caretaker of the younger sister refused to die first. She waited patiently for her sister in life and into death. Ase.

Princess Tam Tam


I walk into Princeton University’s Berlind Theater on Mother’s Day and a painting of Ms. Josephine Baker hangs high above the blue-tinted stage. Ms. Baker never dances out with her long lanky legs and toothy smile, (like one would hope) but her presence is felt through that painting. She is the sun in the sky of the set illuminating the characters (and character flaws) in Pearl Cleage’s, Blues for an Alabama Sky. 

The current production of the story is being directed by Nicole A. Watson with precision and grace. She channels Ms. Baker in her stage direction—creating a dance of methodical movements between actors and audiences.

I am NOT surprised to see the painting of Ms. Josephine Baker. This is the last sign I need. I know folks think I am rude, but I have to do it. I pull out my phone. Turn the light all the way down and search for the contract from Fabienne in my email. I sign it with my finger. Our address will be 5 rue de Médicis if the creek don’t rise. Josephine’s Bookshop in Paris. I’ve done it. I press send. It’s real now, Ms. Josephine. It’s real. I put away my phone and watch the play.

We can almost hear Ms. Josephine, loud and “laughing like a free woman,” throughout this production which takes place in a 1930s Harlem tenement. She seems to know the answer to the question that all Cleage’s characters are asking–how do free women move? Is there a way out of bondage without running? 

Yes. Expansion. 

This story begins with Cotton Club singer Angel played by confident and charismatic, Crystal A. Dickinson, having just been fired from her job at a nightclub. Angel is down on her luck and her finances, like most in the throws of the Great Depression. Through Angel we meet her cast of close friends, Delia (Maya Jackson), an activist social worker, who is working with the church to organize a family-planning clinic; Sam (Stephen Conrad Moore), a doctor, who delivers babies at Harlem Hospital, and Guy (Kevin R. Free), Angel’s costume designing friend and caretaker, who is leading the charge for the group to follow Ms. Josephine Baker’s footsteps straight to Paris. “Ce va?”

Guy is my favorite character, even though Kevin R. Free did some stumbling over lines, I think once he finds his flow, he’s going to spit fire into the role which will increase our emotional connection to him and Angel. Kevin R. Free is going to make audiences laugh more and cry more the longer he plays that role. He and Dickinson have great chemistry.

Guy is the narrative’s creative. He is determined to stitch together a plan that gets him and Angel out of living off the scraps of a divested Harlem. His plan is to take his friend to see the glorious City of Lights on Ms. Josephine Baker’s dime, so Guy sleeplessly designs showstopping costumes for Ms. Josephine Baker. He sews while Angel flits about trying to become a singer. Guy’s plan appears to be working until Angel meets Leland Cunningham (Brandon St. Clair), a grieving Southern suitor from Alabama who just may hold the key to Angel’s financial freedom. 

What did those who became the intellectuals and artists of the Harlem Renaissance gain from migrating away from their lives in the South and heading up North? Folks like my grandfather got freedom from lynch mobs and sharecropping. Yes. But he lost his land rights, right? 

Likewise, what did those intellectuals and artists, like Josephine Baker of the Harlem Renaissance gain from leaving the United States for Paris? But also what did they lose? What is the cost of freedom—especially for women?

Angel and Guy sit at the crux of this story about escaping, with differing approaches to how to free themselves from a spiraling social situation.

The playwright, Pearl Cleage, is many things that I hope to be someday. A novelist, a dramatist, an essayist, and a poet. She was raised in the Black Arts Movement and you can tell. She started telling stories when she was just two years old to her older sister. She’s alive to see her work done and redone time and time again. Blues for an Alabama Sky came into my life at the right moment, Ms. Cleage.

I’m officially off to Paris to build Josephine’s Bookshop this summer and I hope you’ll join me physically or follow along online. 

As you can see, Ms. Josephine Baker is speaking, and continues to remind us to “laugh like free woman.”

Happy Mother’s Day. 

That’s What She Said

“As a young girl, Jeannine Cook embraced storytelling the way some children cling to teddy bears or dolls. Her mother’s declining vision and her father’s terminal illness drove Cook and her two siblings to seek refuge in the world of make-believe.

“My sisters and I would make up stories all the time,” Cook says, recalling narratives they would concoct, find in books or act out for their neighbors in Hampton, Virginia. “It was just our way.”

Storytelling has remained a constant throughout Cook’s life. As an undergraduate at the University of the Arts, Cook launched Positive Minds, a club that gave children the skills and wherewithal to tell their own tales. The club became a launchpad for teaching stints at Belmont Charter School and YesPhilly, an accelerated high school for students who previously had dropped out or been incarcerated.

“What do we do with young people who have been told that they don’t belong,” Cook asks. “Inviting them to share their stories and learn other people’s stories is how you re-engage and remind somebody that they do have a place in society.”

As a consultant for the American Friends Service Committee, Cook traveled to Africa and the United Kingdom to help develop curricula that use narrative and poetry to explore racism, colonialism and imperialism through a global lens.

The consulting work continued in 2019, when Cook enrolled in Drexel’s MFA program. At the time, Cook envisioned opening a cozy little bookshop as a quiet space for her writing and consulting. Oops.

Harriett’s Bookshop, which opened in Fishtown in 2020, and Ida’s Bookshop, which burst on the scene in Collingswood, New Jersey, the next year, have garnered national attention, with help from celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Kelly Clarkson.

Harriett’s is named for abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Ida’s honors Ida B. Wells, the journalist and women’s suffragist who led anti-lynching efforts in the 1890s.

The shops and their online counterpart offer a trove of literature written by women authors, although Cook made an exception when Philadelphia native Will Smith launched the promotional tour for his eponymous memoir, “Will,” at Harriett’s in 2021. Both stores serve as venues where authors give readings, musicians perform, and a choir sings the songs that Tubman used to convey urgent messages to slaves escaping along the Underground Railroad.

Preparing for interviews with scholarly and literary luminaries like Alice Walker, Nikki Giovanni and Imani Perry leaves Cook with little time to focus on her own writing, yet she’s three-fourths of the way through her memoir.

Joining Drexel’s inaugural MFA cohort, Cook relished the encouragement she received from program director Nomi Eve as well as a trip to France where she followed — literally — the footsteps of author James Baldwin. Cook was astonished to learn during that trip about French policies that help small bookstores flourish. What, she muses, if universities and agencies in the U.S. did likewise?

As the great-great-great granddaughter of a former slave who was forced to eat from a pig trough and identified learning to write her own name as a dying wish, Cook is determined to face the world, come what may.

“To still come out wanting to write and tell your story and believing that your story deserves to be told,” she says, “that’s just the people that I come from.”

The change I’d like to see most in the world…

A concentrated effort to repair and restore the lives of those affected by the institution of slavery, much like a modern-day version of the Truth & Reconciliation Trials in South Africa. We need to set aside time and resources to establish and plan for reparation. When social atrocities as tragic as this happen, we need to learn and practice repair. I’d also like to see more seemingly disparate groups working together to solve one issue at a time. Solve! Finally, I’d like to see the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on elections actually spent on solving real issues for real people, not campaigning. Perhaps those resources are what we can use to start the process of Truth and Reconciliation.”

Written by Sarah Greenblatt for Drexel University

this is a title

don’t close your eyes 

don’t let them fall

don’t let them fall or slump slump slump slump

carry them

catch them 

catch them 

carry them 

stretch them wide and jump jump jump jump 

Once upon a time, in a far off land, Heather met James, James met Heather. James says he sees a light around Heather. They kiss. They marry. They conceive. Heather and James lay an egg—they name their egg Jeannine. And read their egg books by her dear Uncle Jimmy. 

This is a fastforward. Jeannine hatches. She goes to university. “Yay! Jeannine.” Jeannine was supposed to come to France before her graduation, but the airport turned her away. A short finger pointing lady marked Jeannine’s passport with a lime green sticker, looked Jeannine up and down, and waved that finger no. 

No. No. No. 

“Don't pee yourself, Jeannine. Don’t pee yourself, Jeannine,” Jeannine hummed under her breath to the tune of the shaking finger. 

Jeannine’s bladder is a pussy. When it is scared, it runs.

At gate 53, Jeannine begs her bladder AND the finger pointing lady and the world to let her fly. “Please, please please let me fly,” she says, through her injured beak. “Please.” 

They deny her pleas. Jeannine stands by the window soaking and sulking and watching the others fly by. “Auvoir, Jeannine,” they wave. “Auvoir.” 

This is a flashback, in this flashback, snake ass fancy pants motherfuckers with deep wallets, and large apples and no faces invite Jeannine to apply for a so-called prestigious award that may help her fly. The fancy pants motherfuckers require Jeannine drop out of Drexel University to apply for their prestigious award. But it’s Jeannine’s last semester of her MFA program. The fancy pants award is almost $100,000 –enough to keep her book businesses and feed her baby chicks and pay for the damn MFA. Jeannine tells delightful Nomi, head of MFA, about the prestigious award. 

Delightful Nomi says Jeannine, don't be a small bird in a snake's garden.

Jeannine—still tempted by the snake with his fancy pants and deep wallet, drinks the nectar from the snake’s morherfucking apple. She compiles all her writings—her essays and articles, columns and stories, poems and prayers. Jeannine flutters through this garden of fancy pants motherfucking snakes and you know what? 

of course you know what! 

snakes eat small birds! 

So they opened their mouths and tried to swallow Jeannine whole. “Unfortunately after careful consideration you were not chosen for this fancy pants prestigious award we tempted you into applying for and made you drop out of school for and clipped your wings for.” So no degree. No award. Just a half eaten apple and half broken wings.

Are you sad for Jeannine? Don’t be sad for Jeannine. Remember Jeannine is the protagonist. 

In this story, someone finds wounded Jeannine. Wraps her wings in twine. Sprinkles them with fairy dust. 

In this flashback, Jeannine goes back to school. 

“Yay, Jeannine.” 

See Jeannine graduate. 

See Jeannine give graduation speech. 

But, Jeannine still cannot fly. 

All she does is flap her wings. 

This is a dialogue called when James Baldwin is your Uncle Jimmy. Every good story has dialogue, right? Can you say dialogue? Yes. Dialogue. Very good. Here is this story’s dialogue. 

Ring. Ring. Ring. 

“Hey, Uncle Jimmy.”

“Hey Neice. How ya been?“

“Been ok, Uncle Jimmy.”

“What ya been up to?”

“Well Uncle, I Did Kelly, Did Oprah, Did Google, Did Vogue, Did New York Times. PBS. NBC. BBC. just like you said.”

“Uhh huh and…?“

“Hmm. Well I still don’t know how to fly?”

“Flying is simple, Neice. Once you have wings. You use them.” 

“Uncle it is anything but easy,” Jeannine’s heart beat at 1260 beats per minute. 

“How bout this? You come to my house for the 

summer? I have a bed for you and will teach you everything you need to know to fly.”

“But Uncle Jimmy…”

“We’ll discuss it when you get here, Niece.” 

Jeannine arrives at the airport a second time and gets on her flight this time. Smiles at the finger pointing lady as she struts to seat 24 F this time. In just a few hours, Jeannine lands in a nest in Nice. 

But Uncle Jimmy is not there they say. Uncle Jimmy is DEAD they say. He’s been dead for sometime. All he’s left behind for Jeannine are his books. 

“How can this be? Uncle Jimmy, this cannot be?” 

Jeannine calls James. No answer. 

Jeannine calls Heather. No answer.

Jeannine calls Nomi. No answer. 

Jeannine calls those snake ass fancy pants motherfucking snakes. No answer. 

Jeannine calls Uncle Jimmy. No answer. 

This is a plot twist. 

Crying now as Jeannine sometimes does at the end of a story. She perches in a cafe window staring out at the Mediterranean Sea. A wind blows her book open to a note in the margin of the front page. “My dearest Jeannine, Go see Karen Karbo in Catalonia.” 

This is an alliteration.

“There you will find a group on an inexplicable concrete slab. Ask them to repeat after you and then you will fly to Paris.” -Signed Your Uncle Jimmy. 

this is call and response. so please repeat after me.

don’t close your eyes 

don’t let them fall

don’t let them fall or slump slump slump slump

carry them

catch them 

catch them 

carry them 

stretch them wide and jump jump jump jump  

And so she did. 

This is the end. 

 

Jeannine A. Cook

murder she wrote

Before the play begins, we hear an interview of Kennedy billowing throughout the newly named James Earl Jones Theater, hauntingly so. A voice of the present and the past. She chats casually about her work and her career.

We know it’s a play about a murder. The name Ohio State Murders gives it away. But knowing the playwright you know it won’t quite be a whodunit nor quite a mystery. We are in Adrienne Kennedy’s Ohio and already she has us by the buckeyes.

But once the house lights dim, the show belongs to Audra McDonald in her dual role as present day and past day Suzanne Alexander—this is the first time the role has been acted out in this way by one person instead of two. Suzanne is here to give a speech at the university she attended 60+ years ago. The main question that the university wants answered is why her work contains so much violence. So the rest of the play weaves us between the past and the present—sometimes she is telling us a story, and sometimes she is acting it out, so we can better understand the writer who stands before us. One who is both masterful and heartbroken. Measured, calculated, and cold.

The set design is a defiant ode to dadaism with bookshelves strewn about rising and falling from the stage at broken angles, one bookshelf doubles as a podium for the plays’ speeches— and the constant movement, the emotional heartbeat which shows through a crack in the stages’ abyss and throughout the entire production that crack is filled with everchanging falling snow.

Audra McDonald gets her full set of flowers for taking on the role of two. But this just one of the many doubles. The two babies, the two other actors playing two people each, the two suitors, the two time periods.

I’m enamored by Kennedy. She is telling us the most horrific story, but the storytelling remains soft, ethereal, and dare I say enchanting. I’m thinking ok whether coincidentally or on purpose Kennedy is speaking to the establishment, whether that be academia or Broadway or any predominantly White institution and she is giving them the same middle finger that her professor, Robert Hampshire deserves. He deserves far more than that of course as much like the relationship she’s had with this industry he’s distasteful.

What happened at Ohio State is just one of many encounters I’m sure she’s had when trying to “test into the major” of Broadway or Harvard. The undeniable duality of wanting to destroy a system that you simultaneously want to be celebrated by.

For this many years, they’ve buried the truth of the murders, to the point where the institution itself doesn’t even realize who they’ve invited to speak. She is not one of their daughters—she’s an orphan, a step child.

The dreams of orphaned children often go unrealized. If you don’t fit the traditional mold you may become too far ahead of the establishment for them to see you in the horizon. Or they catch you just as the sun is setting.

So I know folks are hype the Ohio State Murders made it to Broadway, and we celebrate even as we mourn the murders of so many creative babies that Broadway has left head-cracked in a ravine.