portrait by Caitlin Abrams
Dionne Sims
A few months ago, Dionne Sims was another 20-something grinding out the start of a sensible career. She was a user experience (UX) designer at a major corporation. A good job. Solid prospects. But then the life of George Floyd was stolen, and the tectonic plates of the Twin Cities shifted inalterably, taking Dionne Sims with them.
“Minnesota doesn’t have a black-owned bookstore,” she tweeted on June 15. “I think that’s my new dream.” Her post didn’t go unnoticed: it garnered more than 14,000 likes, and before she knew it, the only Black-owned bookstore in the state began to materialize.
While it might seem like a career-hard-left to an outsider, it made some sense, as Sims, now 27, grew up wanting to work with books in some form. She even studied communications at the University of Minnesota in the hopes of breaking into the publishing industry. “But college has a way of making you think, like, How will I pay back my loans?” she says.
So she put those bookish dreams back on the shelf and dutifully started into UX. That is, until the world changed.
“In a way, it was good for me to fully throw myself into this,” she says. “It helps me put my restless energy toward something. Being able to connect with people on the level of this bookstore is needed and hearing what other people’s dreams are for Minneapolis and how we want to see the Black community supported and how we can make community projects and spaces to support people when they feel helpless or in a situation that’s challenging for them, that fills me with hope. And I think that hope has been really healing.”
Three weeks after sending the tweet that would ultimately change her life, Sims started a GoFundMe for her store, Black Garnet Books. Her goal was simple: to create a Black-owned bookstore that wouldn’t stock a single title solely written by a white author. She reached her first fundraising goal ($72,000) in only 48 hours. Then she upped the amount to $108,000, which she met a week later.
“I was still working my full-time job during that time,” she says. “In the evenings I was meeting with a lawyer, answering emails, meeting with people to get a logo, filing to create an actual business. I was like, This is what I want to do so badly, and I wanted to put in the time and make sure I’d feel supported if I quit my full-time job.”
She did, in fact, quit her job soon after she reached the GoFundMe goal, and, currently, Black Garnet Books exists online on Bookshop.org and in a six-month pop-up at Merci Tattoo in LynLake. Sims ultimately wants to move into a permanent brick-and-mortar, but due to the pandemic doesn’t think the timing is right.
“I want it to be a place people can go for self-empowerment,” she says. “I want that to be the base of it, and that comes from education, connection, the pursuit of knowledge, even if it’s informal and not through an institution.”
She dreams of Black people—and other people of color—walking into a bookstore and seeing themselves represented on the shelves, not just in books on anti-racism (she’ll stock a few, under the category “Evergreen Social and Political Reads”) but in young adult fantasy novels, comedic memoirs, romances, and graphic novels. Which is something she didn’t have growing up and still struggles to find today.
“I didn’t grow up reading Black authors,” she says, admitting that it wasn’t until she was closer to 18 that she started making a conscious decision to include more authors of color in her literary diet. “There were YA books for Black kids when I was younger, but they were usually rooted in reality and were very heavy, talking about the trauma of being Black—and as a kid all I wanted to do was read about magic and fantasy. I was reading for an escape. Even though there are important stories, that wasn’t what I wanted.”
She isn’t totally alone, either. Zsamé Morgan started Babycake’s Book Stack, a Twin Cities–based bookmobile and online bookshop specializing in diverse kids’ books, four years ago.
“When people are in the bookmobile, their eyes light up when they see a character they relate to,” Morgan says. “And it’s not just about mirrors but also windows. It’s not just seeing yourself but learning about other people.”
Morgan and Sims both encourage customers to try books that are unfamiliar to them, or that feature characters or settings they may not have chosen before.
“When I go to bookstores, I always get one book I know I’m going to love, but always one I’m not sure I’m going to love but I want to try out,” Sims says.
As folks grapple with thinking more critically about social justice and societal racism more broadly, Sims and Morgan hope that they might help people do so with their own bookshelves as well.
blackgarnetbooks.com; babycakesbookstack.indielite.org
This article originally appeared in the October 2020 issue.
