Black Garnet Opens Its Brick & Mortar Store
After two years of online selling, Black Garnet Books soft launches their brick & mortar store that will serve as a bookstore and community space for radicals and readers alike.
BY SRIHITA RAJU WITH ART BY ALEX KOZAK
In the summer of 2020, Dionne Sims began Black Garnet Books, an online bookseller, in the midst of protests against state violence in Minnesota. Sims wanted to create a space to celebrate Black literature and to fight against the institutional exclusion of black voices from the literary community. The curated collection of books focuses on stories from marginalized communities and underrepresented voices. For the past two years, Black Garnet Books has served the Twin Cities as a website and a pop-up at local arts events. Finally, now Black Garnet Books has a long-awaited physical store for readers and radicals to visit.
Luckily for University of Minnesota students, the bookstore is located conveniently right off the light-rail in the Midway neighborhood of St. Paul. Although the opening on October 15th was just a soft-launch event, the bookstore was completely full of excited patrons within an hour of the doors opening.
Upon entering, it is immediately clear that Sims and the rest of the employees at Black Garnet Books want this to be a comfortable community space once the store is fully open. The store has an open floor layout with a few tables in the middle of the store stacked with books they want to highlight, as well as some stationary and stickers. Their walls are lined with shelves that split the books into genres, including a Young Adult section, cookbooks, history books, memoirs, general fiction, and children’s books. Just like when they were completely online, the curation of books shows the commitment Black Garnet Books and Sims have to amplifying marginalized voices and stories, not only to show resistance against oppressions, but also to celebrate the love and cultures that come from diverse communities. Near the shelves they’ve created a cozy seating area so customers can sit and read from the books they're interested in or chat with others (perhaps one of the store’s incredibly friendly staff members).
Black Garnet Books as an online retailer was the only Black-owned bookseller in Minnesota when it first started, and is now one of two along with Strive Bookstore in Minneapolis. Soon, their store will be fully open and operating, and no doubt will become an iconic Minnesota bookstore. For anyone who wants to learn more about radical change and community growth, meet like-minded activists, or just find your next read, Black Garnet Books is the perfect place to be.