Since opening in 2017, Kalima DeSuze’s Crown Heights bookstore and coffee shop Cafe con Libros has become a beloved haven for readers—in particular Black and Afro-Latinx women—looking for a space to dive into the very best that intersectional feminist literature has to offer. And thanks to her background working to combat racism and gender-based violence for nearly 20 years, there are few people better equipped than DeSuze to offer a reading list that spans both the checkered history and the irrepressible joy of Juneteenth.
For DeSuze, it’s this balance between knowledge of the past and hope for the future that guides both her daily work at the bookstore and the books she selected as essential reading for the holiday. “Of course, they’re all written by, for, and about Black women, and told through different kinds of stories, whether fiction or non-fiction,” DeSuze explains. “But I wanted to think about the actual meaning of Juneteenth, from the history around it to the ways in which Black folks and in particular Black women have moved through it, through culture, through activism, through our hair, even, which can be a point of both resistance and joy.”
And as for DeSuze’s own Juneteenth celebrations this weekend? “On Sunday, I’m actually going to relax and my staff are off to do whatever they want to do,” says DeSuze. “My way of celebrating is just by relaxing, really, as I don’t always have the opportunity to slow down. I think with these big holidays that celebrate Black joy, it often feels like there’s an expectation that we always have to be doing something. But sometimes, especially for Black women, the best thing we can do for ourselves is to allow for a sense of comfort and relaxation and restoration. So I’m going to offer myself that to the best of my ability this weekend.”
Here, find DeSuze’s picks for the best books to read this Juneteenth—and beyond—spanning everything from political histories to cookbooks.
On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed (2021)
“This book has all the facts, but there are also so many personal stories interwoven into that history. Sometimes you read something and it feels completely cerebral, or like an exercise. But hearing all these personal stories in this book, it becomes an exercise of the heart and soul. I think that’s why this book feels so important to me—it’s all the intimate details that are included in that broader history.”
We Are Here: Visionaries of Color Transforming the Art World by Jasmin Hernandez (2021)
“This is a beautiful art book by Jasmine Hernandez about Black and brown trans and gender non-conforming creatives. I think everybody has their different ways of defining Juneteenth, but a huge thing for me is that it’s about freedom and it’s about liberation. It’s about being able to come into your own autonomy and define your own life, and I think that this book allows for that. It’s an artistic display of the ways in which Black and brown people, and especially young people, are coming into their own and commanding and demanding their future.”
All About Love by bell hooks (2000)
“This is my always book, and I include it on pretty much every reading list I do. It’s about the ethics we need to live—otherwise, we’d just be consumed. Based on what we just went through with the shooting in Buffalo, and then in Uvalde, you get consumed and overwhelmed by the question of: What is going to take to make change happen? All About Love always keeps me on course and keeps me focused.”
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones (2021)
“This really needs to be basic, required reading. These are stories written by some of the top writers and thinkers of our generation about the transatlantic slave trade, from 1619 all the way up, to a point where people can really understand that this is the pretext for Juneteenth. This is the origin of those celebrations, and you have to understand that in order to understand why it’s so important.”
Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter by Veronica Chambers and Jessica Harlan (2021)
“Veronica Chambers is an extremely talented Black writer and journalist at the New York Times, and here, she chronicles the history of the Black Lives Matter movement through photographs and conversations. This is an opportunity for people to engage with the Black Lives Matter movement from a different perspective, and to really sit with these stories. It reinforces why Juneteenth is so important by illustrating that we’re still fighting for freedom—freedom from police violence, state-sanctioned violence, healthcare, childcare, the most basic stuff. It’s another way of celebrating the folks who are fighting to move that pain into power.”
Love and Justice by Laetitia Ky (2022)
“It’s a book about love, activism, and empowerment, but it’s also about the ways in which Laetitia Ky uses hair as a place of political activism and pushback. I think that that’s very powerful, because historically, a lot of energy—both negative and positive, but mostly negative—for Black women has been wrapped up in our hair. We just had to pass a law [the CROWN act, first passed in California in 2019, was recently passed in the House] that says we can’t be discriminated against for wearing our natural hair, which is crazy. How are we still having that conversation? So it’s a celebration and also a display of resistance about what we as Black women choose to do with our hair, whether it’s considered acceptable or not.”
Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston (first published 2018)
“Zora Neale has an incredible history, and this was one of the last pieces of her work, where she’s talking about slavery and she’s talking about the South with all of these very interesting anthropological stories. I thought this would be great to include because she has such a command over folklore, and this very mythical, magical way of talking about Black life, especially in the vernacular that they used back then. It adds a different layer and a texture to the way we understand these stories.”
Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes from the Matriarch of Edisto Island by Emily Meggett (2022)
“I really wanted to add a cookbook, because there is so much history and politics in Black food, and I feel like when we do these kinds of reading lists, we don’t always acknowledge that, even when it feels so important. If you look at the history of Southern Black cuisine, it is rooted in the history of slavery. But more than that, it’s about celebrating the Gullah Geechee culture, because they are all people of African descent who have maintained their language, their culture, their art, and their way of life, right there on those islands. It’s representative of that spirit of resistance and persistence that underpins Juneteenth.”
Daughters of the Dust by Julie Dash (1997)
“In my humble opinion, Julie Dash has never got the respect that she deserves. Again, this is set on the Geechee islands about this family of women who are beautiful mystics, and the ways in which they try to survive and keep their family alive on that island is the most beautiful story. It followed the film she made that is equally beautiful, but it tells a very specific story to the island and to the history of those people from a Black female perspective.”
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race by Jesmyn Ward (2016)
“This is a response to James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time written by a new generation of thought producers on race and racism in the United States of America. There are gendered aspects of it, too, because it’s also about the ways in which intersectional identities have very different experiences. Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time is a book that I think everybody should read—even to this day, it still astounds to me—but then to have a new generation talk about it and engage with it all over again, it chronicles how far we’ve come, how much further we have to go, and how the fight looks different now. I don’t think it’s just a response to The Fire Next Time, I think it’s in dialogue with Baldwin. There’s no disagreement there—they are truly, genuinely in dialogue.”
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