Like Gold Through Trees

Harriett’s Bookshop: Carving Out a Place for Black Women Authors

While walking down East Girard Avenue in Fishtown Philadelphia, PA, past quaint little coffee shops and studios displaying multiple artistic mediums, keep an eye out for a deep black awning with the words “Harriett’s Bookshop” printed in a white bolded sans serif font. You can’t miss it, especially not with the silhouette of an antique rifle shot through the midriff of the lettering; an ode to Harriet Tubman herself, who was known to use a sharpshooter’s rifle during the American Civil War, and symbolic of Black women’s resilience and their fight for freedom.

Harriett’s Bookshop lies nestled between the red-bricked cushions of Christy H. Neill’s Ameriprise Financial Services and K Studios & Co., just a couple blocks North of the Delaware River, located in the Fishtown (sometimes referred to as lower Kensington) neighborhood of Philadelphia, PA. Fishtown is known for its artistic, music, and culinary scenes. Whether you want to get inked-up at Black Vulture Gallery, order a custom-made dress or take sewing classes from VIIXVII Sewing Studio LLC., or even just want to just try a new hairstyle at Shear Design or Franklin’s Barber Shop, there’s a little something for everyone to enjoy. With numerous culturally vast eateries such as Ekta Indian Cuisine, Hajimaru Ramen, Gilda Café & Market, and Johnny Brenda’s, Fishtown draws in amateur food connoisseurs and tourists of all kinds, such is the way of Philly.

“North of Gerard, south of Lehigh, east of Front and west of the Delaware River, Philly’s young creative class roots itself here with hopes to take ideas from gestation to reality.”

–Visit Philadelphia

Girard Avenue – Locations that are near Harriett’s Bookshop

Despite Fishtown’s diverse dining culture, the neighborhood itself has minimal diversity with a 78.1% White population. Black or African Americans only make up 5.9% of Fishtown, and the other 16% is made up of Asian, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian & Other Pacific Islander, and other unspecified races as of 2020. The median age is 33, the median household income is $41,186, and in terms of schooling, 23% of residents have less than a high school diploma, 41% graduated with a high school diploma but did not move on to college, 6% earned an Associate’s degree, 20% earned a Bachelor’s degree, 8% earned a Master’s degree, and professional school degrees and doctorate degrees were only earned by 3% of the population. There are no colleges or universities in Fishtown, only 10 different elementary and high schools, so for a working-class neighborhood with high property costs, it’s no wonder so many residents didn’t pursue higher education.

Charts from US ZIP Codes on Fishtown Statistics

Fishtown, with its modest rowhouses (a historic reflection of a classic working-class neighborhood in the city), is home to various independently owned businesses. With roughly 23,000 residents packed into Fishtown’s 1.57 square miles of space (including water area) it is bursting at the seams (that’s roughly 17,000 people per square mile). Due to low-income and high population density in this area, crime statistics are very high. “The F grade [shown on the Crime Grades map] means the rate of crime is much higher than the average US neighborhood. Fishtown is in the 6th percentile for safety, meaning 94% of neighborhoods are safer and 6% of neighborhoods are more dangerous.” It’s especially dangerous for minorities within this neighborhood. In a short video titled “Stories in Place: Harriett’s Bookshop,” owner of Harriett’s Bookshop, Jeannine A. Cook, recalls several instances of violence towards her and her bookshop. Black business owners being chased out by white men with baseball bats, peaceful Black Lives Matter protests turning violent when white men rip apart the BLM banners, and Jeannine and her coworkers have even received emails threatening rape, threatening harm, using racist and derogatory words, etc.

“Fishtown has a really sorted past and a really sorted present. I met a woman who came in and I laughed because she was like, we’re not racist and we weren’t racist. I said ‘ok.’ She said, we just didn’t like other people.”

– Stories in Place: Harriett’s Bookshop

Although Philadelphia is known as the “City of Brotherly Love,” it isn’t perfect, it isn’t all inclusive or equal or diverse in some cases. This is just how big cities are, especially in areas of low-income and working-class neighborhoods where it’s ‘work to survive or die trying,’ but especially in a neighborhood lacking in diversity, this is a common issue. Fishtown, as was mentioned before, is predominantly white, it has more Slovak and Irish ancestry than most neighborhoods in the United States (32.2%). The ethnicity/ancestry statistics in lower Kensington are as follows: Irish (32.2%), German (14.3%), English (11.2%), Polish (8.7%), Italian (8.3%), and others below 8%.

Despite the violence and lack of diversity, Cook says that she feels they opened the bookshop in Fishtown for a reason. Maybe the reason is a continued effort to dig deep in the nooks and crannies of suppression and snuff them out, make the world more diverse, provide a place for women of color to showcase their writing.

“I regard my responsibilities as a Black writer as someone who must bear witness, someone who must record. But I want to make sure that a little piece of the world I knew, a little piece that I knew, doesn’t get forgotten.”

-Toni Morrison

Jeannine A. Cook builds a sense of place at Harriett’s Bookshop by not only creating common ground between potential buyers interested in Black women’s writing (by naming this shop in the name of Harriet Tubman and the other shop in the name of Ida Wells), but by using this lack of diversity to bring forth a sense of safety and comfortability for black women that otherwise might feel unsafe or unwanted in other places throughout the Fishtown neighborhood. I feel Harriett’s Bookshop fulfilled the requirements B. Dalton held to the prototype to his shop. “In a bookstore, we strive for a design mixing leisure with excitement, casual warmth with soft elegance, high-brow culture with worn-shoe comfort, and serious study with simple fun (Reluctant Capitalists, pg. 92).” Harriett’s Bookshop shows this through their modern, bright, and contrasting interior design. The events they put on and the community they’re building goes hand-in-hand with mixing leisure and excitement. When Cook would bring the books outside and set up an outdoor bookshop for the day, this is what people go to Harriett’s bookstore for. They don’t come for the copy of “I know why the caged bird sings” because they could always get it online, they go because Harriett’s is an experience, it’s comfortable both literally and socially. You, as a Black woman, don’t have to feel unsafe or uncomfortable when you’re in Harriett’s because of the atmosphere and the people there. Harriett’s perfectly exemplifies how books can change a person’s life (through the video they did) and how it expands your views, which expands your horizons.

I could see Harriett’s (and Ida’s) being the start of a movement, starting out small and growing exponentially just like Appleton’s. Harriett’s drive and their messages speak louder than any words on the pages of the books they sell. The passion and drive and dedication are well worth the hardships. Just as Appleton’s originally location burned down and people still associated the space with Appleton’s, the same is being done for Harriett’s while they endure all this violence, hate, and discrimination from the Fishtown White community. Harriett’s is becoming a legacy. “And here
lies both the strength and the frailty of the 21st century independent book-store. As a cultural and community institution, it has the power to produce and preserve idealized visions of local experience—to be a living archive and to act as a hub in social, literary, and cultural networks; to be, in short, a
physical landmark of and for local community (Highland, pg. 243).”

Harriett’s Bookshop

Sources

Charts

Point2. “Fishtown Demographics.” Point2, 2021, www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/PA/Philadelphia/Fishtown-Demographics.html

Media

Momar, Raishad, and Aiden Un. “Stories in Place: Harriett’s Bookshop.” Vimeo, 19 Sept. 2021, vimeo.com/507621976.

Visit Philadelphia. “Explore the Fishtown Neighborhood of Philadelphia.” Visit Philadelphia, 8 Dec. 2020, www.visitphilly.com/areas/philadelphia-neighborhoods/fishtown/.

Websites

Harriett’s Bookshop. Our Sister Bookshops, 2019, www.oursisterbookshops.com/.

Erkiletian, Alex. “Myth’s & Facts About Harriet Tubman.” Harriet Tubman Myths and Facts, 2023, www.harriettubmanbiography.com/harriet-tubman-myths-and-facts.html.

Security Gauge. “Philadelphia, PA (Fishtown – Lower Kensington).” NeighborhoodScout, 2023, www.neighborhoodscout.com/pa/philadelphia/fishtown-lower-kensington#overview.

US Zip Codes. “ZIP Code 19125 Map, Demographics, More for Philadelphia, PA.” United States Zip Codes, 2020, www.unitedstateszipcodes.org/19125/.

Maps

Google Maps: Girard Avenue, Harriett’s Bookshop

Mapbox. “The Safest and Most Dangerous Places in Fishtown, Philadelphia, PA …” Crime Grade, 2023, crimegrade.org/safest-places-in-fishtown-philadelphia-pa/.

Text

Cresswell, Tim. Place: A Short Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2004.

Miller, Laura J. Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

Past: Place and People, Student Work

Hashtags: Activism, Black women authors, Black-owned business, Fishtown, Community

Bedelya McCann