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| Ida's Bookshop in progess | |
Ida's Bookshop, a Black-owned independent bookstore focused on women authors, artists and activists, is opening soon in Collingswood, N.J., the Courier Post reported.
Named for journalist, activist and early civil rights leader Ida B. Wells, the store is the sister store to Harriett's Bookshop in Philadelphia, Pa. Owner Jeannine A. Cook, who opened Harriett's Bookshop in February 2020, hopes to have Ida's Bookshop open for business on Mother's Day, May 9. Furniture has started to be delivered and Cook has her fingers crossed that it all arrives in time.
Most of the books at Harriett's are by Black women authors. The inventory is arranged around themes that Cook and her team change each month, but customers can order whatever they like. Things will operate the same way at Ida's, and Cook noted that the missions of both her bookstores are "sisterhood focused." In particular, she pointed to the many Black women who are "doing whatever they can do" to help out herself and her store.
Cook told the Post that Collingswood--which is in Camden County across the Delaware River from Philadelphia--"represents the kind of community that's ready for what Ida's is and what it represents." The bookstore is "very much mission-driven," and Cook and her team are actively thinking "about how to implement these ideas that these women committed their lives to when they were here on this planet."
When it came to naming the store after Wells specifically, Cook said Wells's legacy seemed especially relevant "because of what we're seeing with state-sanctioned lynchings. Her mission around lynching continues to inspire. Her mission to use journalism and the written word as a tool for social change continues to inspire me. I think it's going to inspire a whole generation."
In an ideal world, Cook continued, there would be a similar bookstore in every state named after women such as Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks and Toni Morrison. "There's no shortage of amazing Black women who have done work that I think that needs to be and gets to be recognized."