An excerpt from Prose to the People: A Celebration of Black Bookstores by Katie Mitchell, out April 8:
Meeting Desiree Sanders made me wish I had a time machine so I could travel back to the 1990s and 2000s and just once, experience Chicago’s first Black woman-owned bookstore, Afrocentric Bookstore. Cruising down Chicago’s renowned Lake Shore Drive, enthralled by Desiree’s tales, I yearned to travel back to 1996 on S. Wabash Avenue, to Afrocentric in all its glory.
Before the store closed permanently in 2008, Afrocentric Bookstore served the Black community for 18 years. Thousands sat at book signings, partied at book festivals, browsed curated inventory, and soaked in the artful aesthetics that Afrocentric became known for—no time machine required.
Before Desiree built Afrocentric, she built her world out of books. As a bookish South Side kid, she fell in love with the worlds between the covers.
“I was the only child for a long time. I was a loner, too. I kind of stayed in the house and didn’t go out, so books were my escape.”
Desiree escaped into one book in particular: Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
“It really resonated with me how she experienced such severe trauma that she decided to be mute for several years and how she got out of that headspace. That was incredible to me. And then to go on and have these adventures in her life as a Black woman and be able to travel solo around the world and experience different cultures—showed me what was possible.”
To go on and have these adventures in [Maya Angelou’s] life as a Black woman and be able to travel solo around the world and experience different cultures—showed me what was possible.
Desiree Sanders, owner of the late Afrocentric Bookstore
In retrospect, it’s easy to see how Maya Angelou’s advice to “pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you” ran in the background of Desiree’s life.
Desiree started Afrocentric Bookstore in 1990, at a time when the Black bookstore owners in Chicago skewed older and male. “I was extremely green and young when I started. I was in my early twenties when I opened up the bookstore. Wow.” Desiree pauses, in awe of what she was able to accomplish at such a young age.
“The industry at the time was male-dominated. And not just being a young woman, but a young Black woman, there was, you know, certain”—Desiree waves her hands and rolls her eyes to conjure the right words—“machismo, misogynistic things I had to deal with from Black men.”
But Desiree resolved to run Afrocentric Bookstore her way.
Desiree’s way not only impressed local patrons—Desiree told Essence that the store grossed $207,000 in 1993, which would be over $400,000 today—but also literary giants.
“One day I get a phone call in the store on Wabash, and I’m like, ‘Hello?’ The person had an extremely distinguished voice, and she says, ‘Hi, I’m calling o see if you have any copies of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings?’ I said, ‘Yes, yes, I do.’ And she says, ‘Okay, where are you located?’ And I give her my address. She tells me she and her driver will be there and asks me to put four copies on hold.
“That same day Maya Angelou walks in. There are no other customers in the store, and she just walks in and is like, ‘Yes, dear, I’m here to pick up the four copies you put on hold for me.’ ”
Desiree had pursued what she loved and done it well. Now, it was Maya Angelou who couldn’t take her eyes off her.
“I was like, ‘Ms. Angelou, it’s an honor for you to come in my store and get these books. You can just have them,’ but she tells me, ‘No, you have to make money. I’ll be fine. I’ll take these and one for my driver. He’s been so good to me on this trip.’ ”
Desiree had pursued what she loved and done it well. Now, it was Maya Angelou who couldn’t take her eyes off her.
Maya Angelou’s surprise drop-in eventually led to Afrocentric Bookstore hosting a packed book signing with the renowned poet—despite publishers’ hesitancy to send Black literary stars to Black bookstores.
“The publishers didn’t send the Black authors to us; they’d send them to the big white stores. Whenever I’d find out a Black book was coming out, I’d reach out to the publisher and request I be a stop on their book tour. They didn’t send
them at first, but I got Maya Angelou because she came to the store and was impressed.”
It was easy to be impressed by the twenty-something electrifying the Chicago book scene.
Desiree saw a need for a Black book festival and brought the Book It Black To Bronzeville book fest—a full day of panel discussions and fun—to the South Side.
Afrocentric Bookstore’s impact continues to reverberate. Desiree’s daughter, Fatimah Warner (known professionally as the rapper Noname), also started a book venture, the Radical Hood Library in Los Angeles.
And Chicago shows love to the hometown hero, too. As we walked the streets of Hyde Park, we were stopped multiple times.
“Desiree! Is that you?”
“Heyyy, Desiree!”
Though Afrocentric no longer exists physically, the legacy of this vibrant Black institution transcends time and space, still rising in residents’ hearts, still enchanting them like a swallow’s song.
