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‘Well-Read Black Girl’ Is Bigger Than Glory Edim

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CreditCreditAn Rong Xu for The New York Times

This September, outside a boutique store in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, members of the Well-Read Black Girl book club sat in a misshapen circle of folding chairs on the sidewalk. The sky was gray, rain minutes from spilling over onto the diasporic spread of bantu knots, dreads, twist-outs, wash-and-gos, afros and braids below; one woman covered her pressed hair with a scarf in anticipation. They listened intently while Glory Edim, who created the book club, interviewed Charlene A. Carruthers, author of “Unapologetic: A Black, Queer and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements.” A number of passers-by slowed down to hear the two women in conversation, and by the end it was hard to say who had planned to be there and who had come upon the gathering by chance.

Well-Read Black Girl started as an online community in 2015, when Edim launched an Instagram account where she posted writers’ quotes and shared the books she was reading. At the time, she was working at Kickstarter as a strategist but was privately thinking of ways to channel her love of books into a career. She was inspired by a gift from her longtime boyfriend: a T-shirt emblazoned with a custom crest that included the names of some of her favorite writers — Gloria Naylor, Maya Angelou, Octavia Butler — and, in academic font, his endearing name for her: Well-Read Black Girl.

“When I was wearing the shirt, I was constantly being engaged in conversations,” Edim said, “Suddenly I was sitting next to someone on the subway, and we’re talking about Toni Morrison, and it didn’t feel like I had just met this person.”

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CreditAn Rong Xu for The New York Times

Edim, 35, hosted her first in-person book club in September of that year to discuss Naomi Jackson’s “The Star Side of Bird Hill.” Around 10 people were there, and a similar group turned up at the next meeting for Angela Flournoy, and then for Margo Jefferson. Today, the physical book club is still intimate, averaging around 30 people, but the community has grown substantially in other spaces. The Instagram account, which had about 100 followers when Edim hosted her first meeting three years ago, now has upward of 140,000 (the number keeps ticking higher), and last September, more than 300 people attended the inaugural Well-Read Black Girl Festival in Brooklyn. Edim left her job at Kickstarter to concentrate on building the community full-time.

She also scored a book deal. “Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves,” an anthology of essays and conversations she edited, will be published Oct. 30.

Edim was raised in Arlington, Va., a multicultural hub near Washington, and is the eldest of three. Her parents, both Nigerian, divorced when she was in the sixth grade. Her father moved back to Nigeria, and as a teenager, she flew there to visit him during the summers. She comes from a family of readers; her mother was a historian before emigrating to the United States and often took Edim and her younger brothers to the library, where they would stock up on books. That’s where she discovered Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”

“I remember my first book report on Maya Angelou. I had an A.P. English teacher really critique her and be like, ‘She’s not a good writer,’” Edim recalled, “He was looking at syntax, he was looking at grammar, he was looking at her completely different structure.” But these weren’t the elements that appealed to Edim. She was drawn in by Angelou’s descriptions of her relationship with her brother, which reminded Edim of her own, and said Angelou “changed my thinking about literature, who can write and whose voice is important.”

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CreditSonny Figueroa/The New York Times

After high school Edim attended Howard University and immersed herself in black feminist literature. “I was reading bell hooks or Toni Cade Bambara or Audre Lorde or Pat Parker — all these women have helped shape my own sense of self-worth.”

Edim brings this sensibility to her book club by centering on black woman writers and often coaxing members to ask questions and join the conversation. “I want to hear them fully, and I want to help them feel listened to and seen,” she said. “I am thinking solely about us, and everything else is secondary.”

Several attendees said that the shared base understanding of cultural context makes for more interesting and rich discussions. “This is one of the rare opportunities to see a lot of black women who you don’t know talk about their experience of reading the book, but also their experience in the world,” said Raquel Thompson, a Panamanian-American living in Brooklyn. “It’s the only space I’ve been in, probably ever, where it’s felt like black womanhood is the center, and it’s not about our relationships with each other, necessarily, but about our identity.”

Leslie Martinez, a high school teacher who has been attending meetings for more than a year, called it a “sacred space,” adding that in past clubs, she’s been the only person of color among “a group of middle-aged white women.”

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CreditAn Rong Xu for The New York Times

Others said Well-Read Black Girl has introduced them to new writers. “I didn’t know about the vastness of black women authors,” said Vanity Gee, a public programs producer who lives in Brooklyn. Amaka Iloegbunam, who sought out the book club after moving to New York from Georgia, echoes her sentiment. “Growing up, I read a lot of books by white people,” she said, adding that the book club has prompted her to do her own research on black writers.

Edim herself is also a draw. “She’s managed to both make this feel as intimate as it is and stretch it out to people in Chicago, L.A.,” said Shirleen Robinson, who works as a library assistant and part-time sensitivity reader. The first time she attended in 2016, it was her birthday, and though Edim “didn’t know me from anyone,” she gave her a hug and had the group sing “Happy Birthday.” Edim checks in with people and knows them by name, said Robinson. “That’s why I keep coming,” she said. “It’s more than just reading the latest Pulitzer Prize-winning book.”

Edim mentions several thoughts for the future of Well-Read Black Girl, which she says is in its incubation phase: funding fellowships for writers of color, opening a bookstore and working with publishers and schools to diversify their offerings. The festival will return in November. “What I’m trying to do is beyond me,” she said, and now that she’s completed her anthology, she’s asking herself, “How else can I help people? How else can this work be of service?”

A day after the book club meeting, Edim and I met up to see the last performance of “Straight White Men,” a stage show that explored the identity politics surrounding white men. It was raining when we walked out of the theater, and as soon as we escaped the crowds and were walking side by side, Edim said, “I have so many thoughts,” before launching into an animated analysis of the show and its themes. She felt for the main character, Matt, who was reckoning with white guilt and felt that, despite his best efforts, he caused more harm than good as a white man. “We need more people who understand their privilege,” but it does not need to be self-deprecating, said Edim.

Later, in a conversation about both her book club and the play, she added, “Whether it’s straight white men, black women or Latina women — everyone is just looking to be heard. Everyone deserves to have their stories told and held with integrity and dignity.”

Follow Concepción de León on Twitter: @bycdl.

Well-Read Black Girl Festival
Nov. 10 at Pioneer Works, 159 Pioneer Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn; wellreadblackgirl.com/festival-2018.

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A version of this article appears in print on , Section C, Page 15 of the New York edition with the headline: Well Read, Well Known. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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