(Photo: Boneshaker Books table display)

Not to knock Toni Morrison, but she’s not the only person of color to have ever written a book. In a lot of local bookstores I’ve frequented I’ve had to go to the designated cultural section to find books by a person of color rather than having them on display or dispersed widely throughout the store.

I made this list to highlight amazing bookstores that have Black/Indigenous people/People of color (BIPoC) writers as a staple rather than as a token for their corresponding months. In no order, this is a list of the bookstores I believe do the most to champion communities of color.

Factors involved in making this list:

• Ownership, accessibility, and location (Are they owned by BIPoC? Are they located near these communities?)
• Books including local BIPoC writers
• Collaborations with BIPoC communities
• Diversity of experiences within selections. For example, books about Blackness unrelated to slavery/the Civil Rights era, more books about Asia written by Asians than not, Indigenous authors besides Sherman Alexie.

Birchbark Books

Owned by the legendary Louise Erdrich, Birchbark Books operates with Indigenous communities in mind, and many of their staff are from Indigenous communities themselves. Birchbark Books has a vast selection of books on Indigenous culture as well as other communities of color. I found an Ojibwe counting book for babies and a lot of tribe-specific cookbooks to name a just a fraction of their noteworthy features.

And of course, they’re never out of the latest Erdrich book, which is always a plus!   

Boneshaker Books

Boneshaker is almost entirely volunteer run, which gives them a lot more freedom when curating their books. Their very genre titles are revolutionary, with names like “anti-racism,” “anti-imperialism,” and “LGBTQ health.” They also have common genres, like sci-fi and biography.

Books from indie stores are inevitably more expensive than big corporations like Amazon or Target, and this can be a barrier for the bibliophile on a budget. But Boneshaker has a graphic novel library and a decent number of shelves carrying less expensive used books.

Bonus: They deliver books by bicycle within city limits for free!

Moon Palace Books

Located in Minneapolis and a two minute walk from the Lake Street and Minnehaha Avenue intersection, Moon Palace is hands down the most public transit-friendly of the three bookstores mentioned. On top of featuring lots of books by BIPoC, they also host multiple events, sometimes in the same month, to showcase BIPoC writers with readings and other events.

A major plus to Moon Palace is that they have a section on their website where you can pitch your book to them. If they like it, it may end up on their shelves. Though I don’t expect this from every bookstore given the costs and labor involved, it’s an awesome practice to involve BIPoC writers in the business side of writing, as such voices are seriously lacking.        

Honorable Mentions

Milkweed Books

I didn’t include this on the top list as they’re technically a publishing company that just so happens to run a bookstore. Located in the iconic Open Book building, patrons can browse Milkweed’s extensive collection while waiting for a meal at the adjacent cafe or enjoying work from many of the literary giants visiting The Loft Literary Center one floor above.

Ancestry Books

Owned by Black community organizer Chaun Webster and his partner, Verna Wong, this bookstore was the place to be for many artists of color. They lost their building in 2016, but have operated as a pop-up bookshop at various events. Here’s to hoping they’ll find a new home and be a North Minneapolis staple once again!

By far, this post is not exhaustive. There are plenty of great reasons to visit all the stores mentioned besides the ones I’ve listed. In addition, new bookstores are always opening and old bookstores are always updating their collections. I hope you’ll find a new favorite in one of these places and happy reading!  

Did I miss your favorite BIPoC bookstore or want to share other reasons to shop indie? Comment below!

Author:

1. Tell us about your fiction piece in Volume 20. How did it come to be?

When I was teaching at Hamline in 1994, Jimmy––an inmate at Oak Park Heights Maximum security prison––took two classes from me, one in the MALS (Master of Arts of Liberal Studies) program and the MFA core class which I co-taught with Quay Grigg. Each week we taped the class, mailed him the tape, and then he called one of us from the Education Director’s office. Quay and I visited him in the spring of 1995 and then my husband and I started visiting him every six weeks or so. We became friends. Years later, when he was at USP (United States Prison) Coleman in Coleman, Florida, he told me that he had been feeding the gulls. The guards weren’t happy about it and told him to stop because the gulls were pooping (he used another word) on their cars. Then, all the inmates began feeding the gulls. He laughed and laughed when he told me. It is my practice to write a quick, flash fiction story every morning, so it is not surprising that soon after, the image of a convict feeding the gulls appeared, but with what I believe was the true inspiration for Jimmy feeding those birds, the yearning to be connected to something on the outside, to be over that wall and free.

2. What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

I don’t think there was any single experience. I was a voracious reader as a child and particularly skilled (or should I say distracted?) as a daydreamer with stories always unfolding in my head. I lulled myself to sleep each night by telling myself a story (in which I was usually the central character). Also, I was and am quite shy and writing comes more easily to me than talking.

3. How has writing shaped your life?

I don’t know that writing shapes my life as much as it informs it. Writing is a way for me to discover what I am thinking, what I am wondering about, what I am interested in. That said, you would think that I would have stacks of journals, but I am not really much good at writing in a journal; my real life isn’t that interesting. That is why I started writing quick little stories first thing every morning, just making something up quickly without much, if any, forethought or planning. I love the surprise and the discovery of those stories, people and events that didn’t exist moments earlier until I started writing.

4. What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work?

I like writers who cherish language and take me to worlds I’ve never known. Louise Erdrich inspires me just now. She is so prolific, such a beautiful writer, and writes about people and stories that I could never imagine, but who I know are part of Minnesota and thus part of my life. I am awed by Marilynne Robinson‘s use of language and depth of character. She writes of extraordinary people in ordinary situations, which, perhaps means that we are all extraordinary in some way.

5. What projects or pieces are you working on right now?

I am writing a book about Jimmy, the inmate who inspired “Gull Man,” telling his story against the backdrop of our broken criminal justice system. It is my first venture into nonfiction, and for me, much more challenging––I can’t just make it up! His is a long and complicated story beginning with his detention as a juvenile at age 13 for skipping school and running away from home. When he was sentenced, the judge said, “Now you will learn how to behave.” What he learned was how to be a tough guy, how to fight in order to survive the extraordinarily difficult and dangerous environment of juvenile detention in the 1970s. He called it “gladiator school” and that is indeed what the juvie system at that time turned out, young men groomed for conflict without any mediating influences, without anybody who believed in them as worthy human beings. In 1982 he was sentenced to 80 years without benefit of pardon, parole or commutation of sentence for a robbery of a deli with a fake gun in which nobody was hurt. His lawyer was disbarred a few months later for incompetence. Jimmy has repeatedly tried to appeal the sentence based on numerous errors committed at the original trial, but…it’s complicated. That’s my project now: following one man’s forty-five year journey through the morass of what we call justice in the United States has been both informative and discouraging.

Visit Kathleen’s website and follow her on Facebook.

1. Tell us about your poems in Volume 20. How did they come to be?

Both of my poems in this issue stem from contemplating the complexities of international adoption and examining my position of privilege within that system. While we were in the middle of a years-long adoption process, people would often ask my husband and me what made us choose international adoption. “International Adoption Story: It Didn’t Begin” emerged from how I feel when I try to answer that layered and complex question. Similarly, “Adoption: Becoming the Verbs” is my effort to convey the controversy surrounding international adoption and to illustrate how multiple emotions, such as love, gratitude, guilt, and failure mingle and co-exist.

2.  What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

I grew up in a town of 400 people, which meant there was no community library to feed my book hunger—except for the school’s tiny library, which was one small room. I asked for books for every holiday and birthday, rereading everything. I read The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton 17 times. Loving to read made me become a writer. I love the smell of a new book, the way a poem can turn my world sideways, the pleasure in playing with language. What else is like it?

3. How has writing shaped your life?

It would be shorter to answer how it hasn’t shaped my life! Writing is a challenge and a joy. The Twin Cities offers such a supportive writing community, and I’m grateful for it and my many talented writer-friends. Writing seeps in to my life professionally and personally—I teach it, I am the Poetry Editor for Midway Journal, I mentor in the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop program, I’m in two writing groups, and more. I’m grateful for the amazing people and experiences writing has brought into my life.  

4. What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work?

I read fiction and poetry constantly, so I’d say whatever I’m currently reading is what’s immediately inspirational. During the last couple of weeks, that would be Louise Erdrich’s novel, Future Home of the Living God; E.J. Koh’s poetry in A Lesser Love; Melody S. Gee’s poetry in The Dead in Daylight; Charles Baxter’s short story collection, There’s Something I Want You to Do; and Emily Fridlund’s novel History of Wolves.

5.  What projects or pieces are you working on right now?

Terrapin Books accepted and published my full-length poetry collection titled Suspension this year, and I couldn’t be happier. I continue to work on new poems, many of which are inspired by the ongoing political upheaval. I’ve also just completed a middle-grade fiction book called Macaw Island, which I envision as the first in a series of six books featuring the same group of children. Each book will focus on a different, current environmental or social issue.

Visit Paige’s website here and follow her on Twitter.

For twenty one years, Water~Stone Review has been a collaborative passion project of students, faculty, and staff. For our next issue, we are bringing a new team member to the process with hope of expanding our chorus of voices in our pages as well as our reach and readership. 

 In this post we meet Vol. 22 Contributing Poetry Editor, Sun Yung Shin.

1. Your work as a writer and editor creates conversations and connections between voices, concepts, world views, and a whole galaxy of other elements. With so much to work with and work from, what excites you as an editor and as a writer?

What excites me as an editor is being surprised. I am looking to read something that’s unlike—in some compelling way—anything I’ve read before, although it doesn’t have to be formal, it can be any number of types of surprises. I’m always looking to be awakened or resurrected as a reader, and to explore new ways of being and feeling human (or animal, mineral, vegetable, vapor, liquid…sublimation…), a part of this universe.  

As a writer I get excited by the possibility of expressing complexity, of the effort to use the medium of language—which includes silence, and music. I am compelled to write in order to make a “dam against erasure,” as Solmaz Sharif has put it. Not just personal, individual erasure, but cultural erasure, and the continual mutilation of the subjectivities of being a woman, a person of color, an immigrant, etc.

2. What was an early experience that led to you becoming a writer?

There are so many, even though I came later to writing, because there was such a void in terms of role models, culturally, but I know that my early experiences in the Roman Catholic church and in the arts continue to feed my love of languages, rhythm, music, and mystery.  

3. What compels you to keep writing and working with words during challenging times?

I’ve never not existed in challenging times, although I myself am very privileged at this moment, in terms of my education and relative safety in global terms, and in American terms. I was born into a time when South Korea was ruled by a military dictator who had declared himself president for life. I am a naturalized U.S. citizen because of U.S. proxy wars in Asia and ethnic cleansing in Korea. As a woman, I am subject to violence all over the globe, past, present, and future. As an immigrant of color in the U.S., I am considered a parasite and a burden. As an Asian American woman, no one is interested in my history or my condition except others who share my subjectivity, and even then. This is just reality. I write from a place of displacement, dispossession, silence, and disrepair. From neglect and abandonment. My personal journey is as an orphan. Language is something that is, while not free, an aspect of my freedom. Reading across time and space gives me solace, gives me premises upon which to exercise and exorcise my grief and my connection to the human experience. I write as a way to live, as a way to feel my existence as potentially legible to myself and others. I also deeply believe in some kind of democracy or anarchy, and in freedom of speech and press, and in the power of collective movement and in the sanctity of individual life. Language and expression are a birthright and a human right. When we can push back against the forces that would silence us and dictate how we think and what we say, I feel strongly that we must. Poets and writers are dangerous, and authoritarian regimes know that.   

4. What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work?

Of course, so many! But one of the most important to me has been the Korean immigrant woman poet Myung Mi Kim, whose work gave me a way in to poetry and poetics.

5.  What projects or pieces are you working on right now?

I’m working on another poetry manuscript that is loosely focused on evolution and mass extinction, and it’s a kind of elegy, I suppose, and I have several other non-fiction book and anthology projects cooking. I am very grateful to have wonderful collaborators and it’s a great time to be a poet. I am in love with all the new, thrilling work coming out from writers of color and native writers.

Visit Sun Yung’s website here and follow her on Twitter.