Designer and University of Minnesota professor Terresa Moses never imagined herself owning a bookstore. She had carved a path in community-centered abolition work through Blackbird Revolt, a design studio focused on advancing racial justice with protest-ready materials like posters, prints and T-shirts. But when Black Garnet Books founder Dionne Sims, approached her with the opportunity to take over the abolitionist bookstore, it felt like a natural next step in her career.
The vision of Black Garnet Books took root in 2020 with a tweet from Sims, sharing her dream of opening a Black-owned bookstore in Minnesota. As the world grappled with the murder of George Floyd, Sims launched a year-long pop-up at Merci Tattoo in Minneapolis. The pop-up, supported by a crowdfunding campaign that raised nearly $114,000, became a much-needed community hub for Black and brown stories. By 2022, Sims secured a $100,000 Neighborhood Sales Tax Revitalization (STAR) grant from St. Paul and opened a permanent storefront in the city’s Hamline-Midway neighborhood, making Black Garnet Books the state’s only Black-owned bookstore at the time.
Other Black literary spaces have since emerged in the Twin Cities. Zsamé Morgan founded Babycake’s Book Stack in 2019. Her bookmobile travels around the Twin Cities, offering children’s books by authors and illustrators of color. Her business was forced to go online due to the pandemic in 2020, but returned to pop-up events in 2021. And Mary Taris opened Strive Publishing & Bookstore in downtown Minneapolis in June 2023.
From the beginning, Black Garnet Books has centered Black and brown narratives, offering more than 1,000 titles by authors and illustrators of color. Sims envisioned a space where readers of color could see themselves reflected across genres — from fantasy and memoirs to romance and graphic novels — not just in anti-racism and history books.
In June, Sims announced her decision to step away from the store to focus on her writing and return to school. She knew it was time for someone who shared her vision to take over and she found an ideal successor in her longtime friend, Moses.
Since moving to Minneapolis in 2020 to join the University of Minnesota’s College of Design, Moses has worked as a designer, educator and racial justice advocate. Now, she sees her new role at Black Garnet Books as a continuation of her work to elevate Black and brown stories, culture and liberation.
In an interview with Sahan Journal, Moses discusses the importance of preserving spaces that amplify the voices of Black and brown voices, explores the intersection of art and abolition, and her plans to bring Black Garnet Books to Minneapolis through a pop-up at her new Blackbird Revolt studio, set to open in January.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What inspired you to take ownership of Black Garnet Books?
My design studio is really the foundation for that, I think. We [Blackbird Revolt] have been really focused on “How do we bring abolitionist ideology and Black liberatory thought into the business in a way that centers our voices and our narratives? How do we bring partners and clients that we want to work with that share our mission and our values?”
We can absolutely design something for a big corporate entity, but how are we framing ourselves to where those big corporate entities probably wouldn’t want to work with us anyway, you know? We want to be able to tell our stories and be able to use creativity in ways that really center our narratives. And so because we are already abolitionists in the ways that we run Blackbird, that really transferred over into running an abolitionist bookstore, essentially.
It wasn’t expected. It wasn’t something that I was planning on, like, “Oh yeah, I’m gonna own a bookstore” because I’m an artist and designer and it can be weird when you’re moving into these different levels of identity but I’m pleasantly surprised with being able to continue our mission in the context of owning this store. It was already such a connection of our values that it really kind of made sense. I knew Dionne since I got here to the Twin Cities and so it was just like, “Absolutely I’m interested.”
Also, you know, I can’t not talk about my connection to education. I’m a professor at the University of Minnesota, and I absolutely value my syllabus having Black and brown authors when I’m teaching these classes. I want to make sure that folks know that it isn’t just white folks who know how to design. So, that also made sense for me to own a bookstore in that vein.
Why is it important for Minnesota to have a Black-owned bookstore like Black Garnet? What role have you seen it playing in the community?
When I think about that question, I just think about the importance of having Black spaces, period. Of course, we’re going to be pushing books and educational materials, but it’s also a community space.
Having community spaces where Black folks can come and feel comfortable, not always feel like the “only one,” have examples of folks that they can look up to and find inspiration in, be able to digest materials that come from someone who looks like you and has similar experiences — those are so important to the development of who we are.
Whether you’re a child, a teenager or an adult like myself, we need to continue learning, being inspired and understanding our experiences through the lens of people who have really studied this. It just helps with our own self-awareness and how we move about the world. It’s really important for us to be educated.
So, I would say that the top priority is having Black-owned spaces where we get to decide what’s going to be in those spaces. It’s also about Black and brown voices and narratives being uplifted in that space. It’s not just Black history. We can highlight sci-fi, we can highlight these really cool Afrofuturist narratives that are not supported in a lot of those bigger bookstores.
As someone deeply invested in racial justice, how do you see books and storytelling as tools for activism?
That question makes me think about all the huge thought leaders like Bayard Rustin and MLK. They were all educated and it’s really important for us to be armed with the tools to understand how the system is going against us so that we can fight back.
If we aren’t educated on that, we’re going around saying that “It’s not fair,” which it’s not but we need to understand why to be in the fight, right? So, education always has a place in the movement. Now, it makes me think about the conversation around education versus intellectualizing things. You know, there’s a fine line, but we do have to be guarded with knowledge in order to to fight and continue fighting.
If we just look back at how our ancestors were fighting for Black liberation, we can see that learning to read and things like that were all important for us to be able to move out of a situation that was so violent.
I think if our ancestors were alive today and could come back and talk to us, I guarantee that they’d be talking about educating ourselves and making sure that we have the knowledge and the history of our own people to be able to move things forward.
You’ll be opening a pop-up for Black Garnet Books at the new Blackbird Revolt Studio in Minneapolis in January. How do you see the intersection of these two projects?
Blackbird Revolt has been run completely online since its inception in 2017. Myself and the co-founder have built the team up to where it is now, but we’ve just been strictly remote. So, this will be a really great opportunity for us to be in space together. The way that I see the work here at Black Garnet, intersecting with the studio space, is being able to curate a selection of books by Black and brown authors who talk about design, who talk about art, who talk about abolition, who are talking about Black liberation, and Afrofuturism. So, that’s the kind of books that we’ll have available at the studio.
What can visitors expect to see at the pop-up?
We’ll have posters, T-shirts, crewnecks, stickers, buttons — a lot of stuff that can be activated in protest spaces. We’ll also have the “Stop Killing Black People” hoodies that we were giving out in 2020 and 2021 so all that stuff will be in the space and it will have a similar vibe to the bookstore where we have these smaller community sitting areas. People can come in and use the Wi-Fi if they want to work. They can get tea at our little station. So, I’m hoping it just feels like an extension to the store. I really want [Blackbird Revolt] to feel like a sister to Black Garnet.
With the holidays just around the corner, what are some must-reads?
Ooh, I don’t have any top reads for the holidays. That’s not really my thing. I would say, I am reading “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler right now. I just finished my Ph.D., so I’ve been reading a lot of theoretical material, but bell hooks, of course, is a classic. You could find any book by bell hooks and be inspired. Right when I graduated in October, I read “All About Love” and I would say that’s probably my recommendation for the holidays because it really goes into not only the love you have for yourself and for the community but where that love stemmed from in your family and how trauma is reflected in that.
During the holidays, we’re around a lot of family and a lot of things come up and bell hooks really talks about love from a super empathetic place. I would also say “Rest is Resistance” [by Tricia Hersey] is another one that I am hoping to get into. It’s funny because I bought these businesses and I’m like “I need to rest.” “Rest is Resistance” is always a book that I give away but have never been able to read front to back and so I really want to get into that.
I would also recommend Ta-Nehisi Coates’ new book “The Message.” That is a new one that I know is flying off the shelves right now and so I’m interested to get into that one after I finish “Parable of the Sower.”
What excites you most about the future of Black Garnet Books?
We just started planning our first event for Black History Month called “Reflect Black” and I think that’s the number one thing I’m most excited about. We’ll have Black vendors and food during the day. Curating books is fun but I’m excited about activating the space, bringing the community in and creating a space where we can connect with each other. I purchased the bookstore on November 1st and five days later, after the election, I was able to activate the space. I bought art supplies, welcomed the community to paint and eat snacks, and it’s really cool to be able to have a space like this. I’ve always leaned on other people’s spaces, so having my own for the community to engage with is really awesome. I think that’s my two biggest things right now: activating the space and expanding the reach.
