by Nahlah Abdur-Rahman
July 22, 2025
Sister’s Bookstore and Cultural Middle has served the communities inside uptown Manhattan for 25 years.
In uptown New York Metropolis, a Black-owned bookstore that has lasted for many years now worries for its future.
Owned by Janifer Wilson, Sister’s Uptown Bookstore and Cultural Middle opened in 2000. Via the years, its choices have expanded because it reworked right into a neighborhood hub, with Sister’s devoted to amplifying studying from and by various communities. Now, new challenges might result in its closing except a brand new viewers turns the web page.
The bookstore usually hosts occasions surrounding literacy and neighborhood involvement, resembling workshops, e-book golf equipment, and sourcing from native authors. Nevertheless, its gross sales have slowed down tremendously, main Sister’s to fall a number of months behind on its hire.
In response to Patch, the woes began through the pandemic, as gentrification, the rise of on-line e-book retailers, and different elements led to the decreased buyer visitors. Wilson additionally believes political pressures amid an anti-DEI motion have additionally disrupted her bookstore’s stability.
“Our historical past is attempting to be eradicated, between banned books and shutting establishments. They’re simply attempting to jot down us off, as if we don’t exist or we don’t belong right here. So, I’m holding on — I’m holding on for expensive life,” defined Wilson.
At present, Wilson has opted to crowdsource funding to maintain the bookstore open, whereas discovering new methods to succeed in a wider viewers of book-lovers. With the shop’s motto of ‘Information of the self is vital to our development,” she hopes that advertising and marketing to youngsters will promote the need of studying to households.
“For those who don’t know from whence you got here, you’re going to have a tough time shifting ahead into turning into who you might be and discovering what your goal is,” the enterprise proprietor added.
A #SaveSisters celebration will even happen July 25, concurrently celebrating the bookstore’s twenty fifth anniversary. Stuffed with video games, reside music, and meals, the fundraiser hopes to avoid wasting what they think about the one Black-owned bookstore in Manhattan.
Calling Sister’s a “labor of affection,” Wilson hopes to maintain the bookstore alive as a testomony to its legacy and place inside the Black neighborhood of uptown New York Metropolis.
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