Name: The Atlanta Bookstore That Found the Magic
Brand: gq.com
SKU: gq-com-63
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

The Atlanta Bookstore That Found the Magic

preview

From GQ’s November 2020 issue, The Big Pivot explores how nimble businesspeople in companies large and small—from an Austin, TX drive-in to an abstract painter to an Atlanta bookseller dedicated to Black literature—created communities and gave us hope in the middle of the pandemic. Before the pandemic, a visit to , a bookstore and reading room in Atlanta, was like going to a crowded kickback. A crew of regulars assembled around the tables to discuss the curated selection of books (mostly rare early editions by Black writers), talk shit, and hang out with its founder, 29-year-old Rosa Duffy. Her customers include Kathleen Cleaver, Tayari Jones, and Ta-Nahesi Coates, and it’s no accident that the shop attracts the clientele that it does.“I’m an artist,” Duffy insists. Whip-smart, stylish, and unreasonably friendly, she tries not to refer to herself as an entrepreneur or a business owner. She calls For Keeps an “installation,” one that reflects her passion for people and ideas.The idea came to Duffy in 2012 when she was a student at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. She’d escape the churn of school in the city by hiding out in places like Strand Bookstore and East Village Books. Titles by Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka were like little life preservers in a moment when she felt adrift, and Duffy, a lifelong bibliophile, began lining the walls of her St. Marks apartment with her favorites. But she couldn't always get her hands on the books she wanted most. For Keeps was born from that failure of the market. It’s a space designed to put readers in conversation with Black writers and with ideas they’d never find in the narrow “African-American” sections of other stores.The most obvious home for such a project was Atlanta, the so-called Black Mecca, and Duffy’s own hometown. She found the perfect spot on “Sweet” Auburn Avenue, a strip near downtown once designated the "richest Negro street in the world,” and opened the bookstore in 2018.W. J. Lofton, an Atlanta-based poet, lives just blocks from For Keeps and is one of the shop’s regulars. “When I think about For Keeps, I think about family,” says Lofton. “[Rosa] is not just a bookstore owner, but she's also a matron of the block.”The store closed to the public in mid-March and will reopen on an appointment-only basis this month. “I’m not trying to put my people at risk,” Duffy says. She has been using the store as a workspace and at first hated the silence, but is learning to embrace it. It’s helping her regroup after a whirlwind two years in business. She’s resting now, sorting through her collection, hunting down new material, and thinking through how For Keeps can better serve the community she’s created when the world finally reopens.“In a space like this, rest is necessary,” Duffy says. “So during something like a pandemic and the trauma that we're going through as Black folks, in order for the space to survive, times like these are almost necessary. Pausing and regrouping. That's what I've been trying to do.”Many bookstores across the country are instituting social-distancing guidelines to keep their stores open and afloat. Others are trying curbside pickup or rushing to make their inventories available for sale online. Duffy has mostly resisted those models. “For Keeps isn’t turning into Amazon.” Instead, she’s making a small handful of special titles available through the website. They almost always sell out. “It is a privileged space that I'm in, that I'm able to appreciate this time, and that's not something that I take for granted,” says Duffy.She’s also leaning on the For Keeps community, which continues to support the store through a Patreon account. For $5 a month, customers get first dibs on freshly listed books and merchandise, and it’s where Duffy posts specially curated content, like interviews with authors and artists. It’s helped keep the bills paid, she says.It has also helped Duffy reconnect to why she started For Keeps in the first place. She’s experimenting with how to cultivate a similar space online while keeping the spirit of the brick-and-mortar store alive. On the first anniversary of writer Toni Morrison’s death, for example, she collaborated with the Free Black Women's Library of Atlanta to build a small altar of flowers and candles in front of the store and posted a 1977 interview with Morrison on Instagram. In it, the interviewer asks Morrison why her work focused on myths and magic. Morrison chuckled a bit before responding. “It’s not possible to constantly hone on the crisis,” she said. “You have to have the love, and you have to have the magic.”That notion sort of summarizes Duffy’s pandemic strategy. She has ideas. She’s considered renting out the store next to For Keeps to provide shoppers with more space, for example. She’s also thought about holding a regular pop-up shop in a nearby park. Both are possibilities for the future. But rather than worry too much about what might come next, Duffy is finding the magic in the moment.

From GQ’s November 2020 issue, The Big Pivot explores how nimble businesspeople in companies large and small—from an Austin, TX drive-in to an abstract painter to an Atlanta bookseller dedicated to Black literature—created communities and gave us hope in the middle of the pandemic. Before the pandemic, a visit to , a bookstore and reading room in Atlanta, was like going to a crowded kickback. A crew of regulars assembled around the tables to discuss the curated selection of books (mostly rare early editions by Black writers), talk shit, and hang out with its founder, 29-year-old Rosa Duffy....

The Atlanta Bookstore That Found the Magic

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS