Café con Libros
Dec 13, 2020 /Photo: Courtesy of cafeconlibrosbk.com
Born out of her desire to blend books with her feminist and community-minded ideals, Kalima DeSuze created empowering literary haven Café con Libros in 2017.
Built to uplift womxn, girls and allies, the bookstore also aims to be as intersectional as possible, while honoring the Black feminist artists and activists who paved the way for today’s movements.
The shop’s empowering ethos echoes throughout its literary offerings, which feature female-identifying, WOC and minority authors as well as themes promoting feminism, activism and LGBTQ+ empowerment, to name a few. Along with their brick and mortar operation, they also have an online presence which they run in partnership with Bookshop — a more mindful alternative to Amazon that supports independent shops. Their consciousness also extends to their café, which serves fair trade coffee and locally-made pastries.
The shop has hosted many local groups and community members with healing and activism-minded missions. They also host a Feminist Book Club and Womxn of Color Book Club, as a way for members to read impactful literature while also starting dialogues with one another. The clubs are held once a month and are open to anyone who would like to read the assigned books.
The summer’s national civil rights reckoning, following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, put Café con Libros in an arduous position as NYC residents clamored to get their hands on books by authors of color. And though the shop’s staff faced an immense, often unreasonable demand for popular anti-racist prose and processed every order by hand, they managed to fill a tremendous amount of orders. The pandemic also put a pin in the space’s in-person programming, though they have managed to continue selling books and carrying out their book clubs online.
Though the year has motivated many to try and adopt more anti-racist and anti-capitalist practices, DeSuze is urging city goers to commit to those practices “for the long haul” in order to build a more mindful economy that supports brick and mortar enterprises like hers.
More about Café con Libros can be found on their website.
