I had the good fortune to participate in Community Book Center’s inaugural Read-A-Thon this past weekend. A little bit about this remarkable spot: Community Book Center’s Facebook page states it’s “more than a book store,” but that’s really an understatement.

This gathering place has been a part of New Orleans’s landscape for thirty-five years. I first entered its doors on Bayou Road, in the Gentilly neighborhood, about two years ago, and I’m always astounded by how enlightened I feel upon exiting. Earlier this year, I was there for Jan Miles’s presentation of her book, The Post-Racial Negro Green Book. The book is “based on the Jim Crow-era Negro Motorist Green Books, and chronicles contemporary racism in ‘post-racial’ America.”

Here’s what I wrote about it back in March, in a post titled The Writing Spectrum: the book “documents acts of racial bias against African Americans in the U.S., from 2013 to 2016. Jan Miles read from a list of incidents—some from the recent years captured in the book, and some from the Civil Rights era—and had the audience guess the century they occurred. We got many wrong; it was an amazingly eye-opening exercise. She compiled this archive ‘for the sake of review, consideration, discussion, and action.’ ”

Just a few months ago, I picked up a signed copy of Bernice L. McFadden’s Praise Song for the Butterflies at Community Book Center. It’s currently #2 on my TBR list. (I had thought of going off on a tangent, about how slowly I read, about why I read slowly, what I’m currently reading. . .but it all felt awfully excuse-y. So suffice it to say I’m very excited to read this book.)

And then the readings on Friday night! I was enraptured by the selections from Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf. (This extraordinary playwright died very recently, at the end of October. I have to share this quote I found about her passing, from her sister, the playwright Ifa Bayeza: “It’s a huge loss for the world. I don’t think there’s a day on the planet when there’s not a young woman who discovers herself through the words of my sister.”)

The heart and soul at the center of Community Book Center is Vera Warren Williams. She read from Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls. . ., along with sisters Christine Jordan and JoAnn Minor. Their voices, along with others like Rose Bratcher, Sunni Patterson, and Christopher Williams, will resonate with me for a long while.

Thank you, Vera, for organizing this event!