Café con Libros: A Small Space With A Big Personality

Imagine you are walking the streets of Brooklyn, New York on a crisp autumn day. The wind is stinging your cheeks, and you look around for a safe haven from the cold weather. You take a right turn onto Prospect Place. Immediately there is a 99Rogers, but just beyond the restaurant, you catch a glimpse of windows painted a robin’s egg blue.

As you get closer to the windows, you see a colorful array of books looking out at you! In the window to the left, you see titles such as The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde, and many more propped on minimalist wooden shelves. In the window to the right, books intended for a younger audience are displayed. Beyond the displays you can see glimpses of more shelves and a small café.

You look up at the awning above the front door, green plants almost obscuring the words BLACK, FEMINIST & BOOKISH in white letters are stark against a black background. You remember seeing this bookstore on an online article when you were planning your trip to the city. It’s Café con Libros! The Black, intersectional, feminist bookstore owned by Kalima DeSuze and her husband, Ryan Cameron. 

Floor plan originally drawn by Janelle Cass, then modified and redrawn by Jennifer Martin, via Procreate and ThingLink.

You open the front door, stepping assuredly into the bookstore. It is smaller than you thought it would be, but the natural light spilling in from the front windows brightens the space. Everywhere you look there are books, Café con Libros merchandise, and funny, but affirming signs. To your left the bookstore’s main collection is displayed in white floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, while to your right a section of children’s literature sits on shelves built between two slabs of exposed red brick. Directly in front of you an employee welcomes you into the bookstore from behind a glossy coffee bar.

Thinking that a hot coffee will rid the chill from your bones, you order from the coffee bar. Near the bookstore’s ceiling, two rows of white shelves are stocked with everything from mugs, books, and speakers with soft music emanating from them. The shelves wrap around three walls of the store, starting at the bookshelves on the left wall, going behind the coffee bar, and stopping when it hits the exposed brick bookshelf. The average book buyer would overlook the shelves, but to you it feels like the bookstore has enveloped you in a warm hug, urging you to browse its selection of feminist literature.

Bringing your attention back to the coffee bar, you see that halfway down the counter is a small, black shelf, full of leisure reading magazines and children’s books. The perfect height for a curious young mind to pick up a book while waiting for their parental figure to order their daily dose of caffeine. The covers face toward you, the shelf too small to shelve them spine out. With another glance at the bookstore, you notice that many of the books are customer-facing, making it easy to read the titles. You remember reading an article about the Wild Geese Bookshop that “[…] did away with ‘normal’ store shelf design and made a point to create bright, customer-facing shelves,” to prioritize a calm space, instead of overwhelming the customer with overflowing shelves (Manusos).  

Seeing the strategic shelving in action, you can only agree with Wild Geese’s ideals. The outward facing books brightened the space, making it less stressful to browse the bookstore’s carefully selected collection.

After receiving your coffee from the employee, you turn to look at two tables displaying the bookstore’s highlighted titles. One table, situated in the children’s section, is dedicated to highlighted children’s books, while the other, situated near the main book collection, focuses on mature titles. On the children’s literature table you see Stacey’s Remarkable Books by Stacey Abram’s and How We Say I Love You by Nicole Chen. On the other table, you see titles such as: Neruda On The Park by Cleyvis Natera, In Every Mirror She’s Black by Lola Akinmade Åkerström, and More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say) by Elaine Welteroth.

Moving on from the displays, you browse the floor to ceiling wall of books. An array of feminist literature is homed within white, cubby-like shelves. Unlike the shelves you’ve seen so far in the bookstore, most of the books are facing spine out. The majority are placed vertically while others are stacked horizontally on top of one another, a front facing book propped on top of them. As Lydia Pyne detailed in her book, Bookshelf, “Bookshelves do more than catalog books; bookshelves put those books on display” (38). You can see the truth in this as you read the titles of the customer-facing books. Some of the more noticeable ones are: My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, The Affairs of the Falcons by Melissa Rivero, and Becoming by Michelle Obama. Though the shelves are stocked full with a range of different titles, the minimalist shelves and open space around you makes browsing the books all the more comfortable.

When you look closer you see small white papers with a handwriting-like font typed onto them. The books are not categorized the way you are used to. When you expect to see different genre names, you see that they are categorized by identity and relation to intersectionality. You see “Modern Black Feminism”, “LGBTQIA+”, “Asia Diaspora”, and many more. Café con Libros holds over two hundred books and each one is handpicked by Kalima DeSuze herself (Best of Brooklyn). You can see the love and dedication that she puts into the bookstore’s organization from the categorical tags alone. They display a deeper understanding of the books displayed on the shelves. To know what themes the books encounter, Kalima would of had to read them first, or at least take the time to conduct a deep Google search. It makes you appreciate the collection more—knowing that she takes the time to curate it.

In an online article published by Black-Owned Brooklyn, Kalima DeSuze talks about how exactly she chooses the books that she displays in her bookstore. She says that Black feminism—specifically the works of bell hooks, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde and Zora Neale Hurston—helped her grow and she came of age (Cafe Con Libros).

“They gave me a vision of myself. They gave me roots. They affirmed me. So I’m trying to center stories by women, about women, for women, particularly women across the diaspora and women of color who we don’t typically hear from in the mainstream.”

– Kalima DeSuze in interview with Black-Owned Brooklyn

Along with the carefully curated collection of books, you see signs and Café con Libros merchandise sitting on the shelves or hanging on the walls. One sign reads “WHEN I THINK ABOUT BOOKS I TOUCH MY SHELF” and other reads, “it’s a girl’s world.” The signs are meant to empower the customers. To make them feel seen and at home in the small space. To bring in Pyne’s Bookshelf again, she explains that “Putting not-books on a shelf in addition to actual books is a way of declaring one’s identity and individuality” (39-40). The signs on the bookshelves and walls demonstrate this perfectly, but instead of declaring a person’s personality, it gives one to the whole of Café con Libros. 

You’ve loved the bookstore thus far, why not support them by purchasing some merch? Tote bags are hung on the wall all throughout the bookstore, and you decide to look at some of them. With black lettering on a plain white background, the tote bags have affirming mantras, such as: “BLACK, FEMINIST & BOOKISH”, “queer. feminist. Bookish.”, “feminist. bookish. unapologetic.”, another simply sports the Café con Libros logo. Along with the signs on the bookshelves these mantras add to the warm and welcoming feeling of Café con Libros. You choose to purchase one, taking the empowering feeling of Café con Libros with you wherever you go.

Kalima DeSuze created Café con Libros to serve as a safe space for the community, and though the space is small, it is full of warmth, love, and personality. It is prevalent that every aspect of the bookstore—from the books chosen, to the strategy of categorizing—was carefully thought out. Instead of having isles of books, the shelves are situated along the walls. This minimalistic floor plan makes it so customers are not overwhelmed, and makes a great space for the bookstore’s book club.

The natural light from the window displays make the small space feel light and airy, almost tricking the customer into believing that the space is bigger. The smell of brewing coffee and the soft lighting combined make for a peaceful book browsing experience. The categorization of the books themselves elevates the browsing experience. Since Café con Libros has such a niche selection of books, labeling them with what framework or intersection they fit into helps the customers find their particular book easier. The bookstore layout makes the shelves fun to read, and the space easy to maneuver.