Our Bookstore is a social space where a growing selection of books invites visitors to browse, sit down, read, and talk. This space was born in the spirit of a library: we believe in the power of books to create knowledge, imagine new social bonds, and empower.
The books we select are mostly published by independent presses and reflect the themes explored in our exhibitions and public programs. We are interested in a variety of disciplines, connecting contemporary art with poetry, literature, music, and theory.
Our collection of books introduces yet-unknown or recently translated international voices. To this end, each season, our guest artists and artists in residence make a selection of books to acquire for our store. Their suggestions make underexposed references accessible to our local audience.
Current Book Recommendations
“Plantation Memories: Episodes of Everyday Racism” by Grada Kilomba
Plantation Memories is a compilation of episodes of everyday racism written in the form of short psychoanalytical stories. From the question “Where do you come from?” to Hair Politics to the N-word, the book is a strong, eloquent, and elaborate piece that deconstructs the normality of everyday racism and exposes the violence of being placed as the Other.
This book is part of our exhibition “Heroines, Birds and Monsters” by Grada Kilomba
Publisher: Between The Lines Books
“The Matrix” by N. H. Pritchard
Long out of print, Norman H. Pritchard’s masterwork presents a decade of poetic experimentation from 1960 to 1970. Inflected with—and perhaps an influence on—Black Arts, the precise architecture of Pritchard’s book (the poems and their design) stage an unexpected meeting of Concrete Poetry with Olson’s “open field” poetics and Cage’s chance operations.
Publisher: Ugly Duckling Presse co-published with Primary Information
“Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds” by Jayna Brown
In Black Utopias Jayna Brown takes up the concept of utopia as a way of exploring alternative states of being, doing, and imagining in Black culture. Brown demonstrates that engaging in utopian practices Black subjects imagine and manifest new genres of existence and forms of collectivity.
Publishers: Duke University Press
“Blank Forms 06: Organic Music Societies” edited by Lawrence Kumpf with Naima Karlsson and Magnus Nygren
Avant-garde jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and textile artist Moki Cherry (née Karlsson) met in Sweden in the late sixties. They began to live and perform together, dubbing their mix of communal art, social and environmentalist activism, children’s education, and pan-ethnic expression “Organic Music.” Organic Music Societies, Blank Forms’ sixth anthology, is a special issue released in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name devoted to the couple’s multimedia collaborations.
Publisher: Blank Forms
“Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979” edited by Alex Balgiu and Mónica de la Torre
Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979 is expansive anthology focused on concrete poetry written by women in the groundbreaking movement’s early history. It features 50 writers and artists from Europe, Japan, Latin America, and the United States selected by editors Alex Balgiu and Mónica de la Torre.
Publisher: Primary Information
“Love after the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction” by Joshua Whitehead
This exciting and groundbreaking fiction anthology showcases a number of new and emerging 2SQ (Two-Spirit and queer Indigenous) writers from across Turtle Island. These visionary authors show how queer Indigenous communities can bloom and thrive through utopian narratives that detail the vivacity and strength of 2SQness throughout its plight in the maw of settler colonialism’s histories.