|
|
| Jeannine Cook (credit: Visit Philly) |
|
Jeannine A. Cook has worked as a writer, designer, and consultant for several startups, corporations, nonprofits, influencers, and most recently, herself. She is the owner and curator of Harriett's Bookshop in Philadelphia's Fishtown neighborhood; Ida's Bookshop in South Jersey; and Josephine's Bookshop, a roving installation in Paris. Cook's debut novel, It's Me They Follow, was released in September 2025. Her memoir, Shut Up and Read (Amistad; reviewed in this issue), chronicles her experiences as a bookseller, writer, and community organizer.
Tell us about the genesis of Shut Up and Read.
I wanted to tell a different kind of bookshop and bookseller story. When my editor and I first presented the title to HarperCollins, they said it was too aggressive--you don't want to antagonize your reader. But the title stuck, as people started reading the text and understanding what I was trying to say. The book has a lot to say about finding your voice, but it's also about listening, and conversations, and about silence.
Throughout the book, you are in conversation with Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Lorene Cary, and other women who have shaped your life and the bookshops.
I'm constantly talking to these women because I spend a lot of time with them. As I'm building these spaces in their names, I'm in conversation with them to better understand who they were, so that the spaces reflect who they were. In our tradition, the ancestors are not totally gone; an ancestor is still someone you can access, if you choose. There's some vulnerability when you're speaking to your elder or someone you admire, and asking for guidance or help. It's almost like a literary family tree.
Tell us more about that literary family tree.
In a memoir, you assume you're going to find out a lot about someone's family, and you do find out about some aspects of my [biological] family. But you really find out who my family is that makes the bookshop happen. My relationships with these literary figures, living or dead, become my support system.
Through conversations with these literary figures, you gain insights about the bookshop and your own writing.
Yes. The memoir is very much about finding a voice--it starts with this doctor who wants to cut open my throat, because of some physical issues I'm having. The throat is where our voice is located, so I refuse to let her do that! I'm also thinking about silence: all the major world religions have a practice of silence. Early on, Lorene told me that the bookshop can be a nondenominational spiritual experience for people. That's always stuck with me, because we are seeking some sort of transformation when we read.
I also am thinking about where silence lives in movement work. Is silence violence? Can it be a sanctuary? As I'm watching everything that's happening in society, I'm thinking: we got so comfortable sharing that it might have stunted our listening ability. My dad, whom I call Lazarus, is a major character in the book, and the reader hears the banter between us. He's got this angelic voice, and I say he's an awful listener--but our whole relationship is about us being in conversation. That trains me to ask: How do we listen better to what people are really saying, rather than just being ready to respond and react?
Shut Up and Read is partly about the survival of bookshops in uncertain times. What do you think has been key to the success of Harriett's and Ida's?
The shops are where I got to meet another version of myself: to find out, in some ways, what I was made of. The shops are for me, but also for a lot of other people: a sanctuary, a space for solace, and coming together to oneself. The shops, in some ways, are an altar. They're each built around a different woman, similar to a saint's chapel: her name, her image, objects from her life and her history are central to the space. It's an immersive experience into this woman's life and how her life can become a beacon of light for our lives. Each of these women has a different way they did that, a different spirit they embodied. When you spend time with them, I believe you can take on elements of that spirit, if you choose.
Harriett has that indomitable spirit: you can't break that woman. That's how Harriett's feels to me. She figured out ways to strategically navigate what she was up against. Same with Ida--she was unstoppable, unusual for her time. She said, "I'm going to approach these atrocities, and I'm going to use the tools I have available to inspire and connect and challenge." She does it with her writing. Then you have Josephine. I find her fascinating; I find the work she did globally to be just as important as what Harriett did locally. Each one of them gives you different tools.
Talk to us about the youth conductors at the shop.
It doesn't work without them. Going back to that literary family tree: you have to understand that there are people who came before you, and people who are coming behind you. And you have a responsibility to both at the same time. I get to live as a bridge, in a way, and remind the youth conductors that they're also a bridge. That's the job: they're doing the same thing the conductors were doing on the Underground Railroad so long ago.
It was important to me that you hear youth voices in the memoir: you hear them sharing their experience on the front lines of a protest. This one young woman--I met her when she was 14. She told me, "I'm too weak to carry boxes of books, and I don't like to read." But then she has been one of the most committed young people to our work. She's now at Johns Hopkins on a full scholarship. It's amazing to see somebody who came from a place called the Bottom, to see how they can learn, and believe: "I'm important, and I have agency, and I'm necessary to the operation of this bookshop."
The bookshop is a prime space for intergenerational conversation, especially when the young people are working. Sometimes they're running the bookshop or building a pop-up by themselves, and it's a huge responsibility. It does change your mind about what you're capable of. Like this young man, Elijah: we used to tell him to speak up because we couldn't hear him. By the end of his time with us, he was giving speeches. It was incredible, and beautiful to watch. And there's also young people like the one I call Nephew, who continue to struggle. Throughout the narrative, I'm constantly holding those two spaces.
The memoir deals a lot with the struggle--between work and life, between safety and threat, between writing and bookselling.
It's very Harriett, in a way. This woman did what she had to do to escape: she got herself out of slavery. But she kept going back, many times, risking her life and the lives of others. There was always the question: If I don't go back, who is going to do this job?
I think the struggle is a part of being the kind of bookshop we have. These institutions that we've built live in those two worlds. People don't always know about the push-pull, which is why the memoir is so important. This is not the typical kind of bookshop memoir; it doesn't glorify the struggle. Instead it says: here's all the underground stuff that you don't know is happening behind the scenes to make a bookshop happen. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams