While Black Community Bookshelf Project

While Black: a forum for speculation on what the gallery can’t hold is a multi-year series of forums, talks, and public presentations developed and organized by Black curators from across Canada in conversation with artists to consider both the limits and possibilities of the relationship between contemporary art spaces in Canada and Black art, artists, arts workers, and audiences.

In September and October 2023, GVPL's sxʷeŋxʷəŋ təŋəxʷ James Bay Branch, home to the Mifflin Wistar Gibbs Study Room, hosted a display of these books as part of the While Black Blackspace Project of bookshelves located in select locations around Greater Victoria.

Updated September 8, 2023
G
Greater Victoria Public Library
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Children of blood and bone
Adeyemi, Tomi
Paper Book
Tomi Adeyemi conjures a stunning world of dark magic and danger in her West African-inspired fantasy Children of Blood and Bone, the first in the #1 New York Times-bestselling Legacy of Orïsha series. 'A hugely enjoyable escapist story that makes you re-examine the...
The city we became
Jemisin, N. K. 
Paper Book
A girl is a body of water
Makumbi, Jennifer Nansubuga 
Paper Book
  'Jennifer Makumbi is a genius storyteller.' Reni Eddo-Lodge An intoxicating mix of Ugandan folklore and modern feminism, from a multi-award-winning author As Kirabo enters her teens, questions begin to gnaw at her - questions which the adults in her life will do...
How long 'til black future month?
Jemisin, N. K. 
Paper Book
Hugo award-winning and New York Times bestselling author N. K. Jemisin sharply examines modern society in her first short story collection. 'The most celebrated science fiction and fantasy writer of her generation... Jemisin seems able to do just about everything' ...
Invisible man
Ellison, Ralph. 
Paper Book
'I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.' Defeated and embittered by a country which treats him as a non-being, the 'invisible man' retreats into an underground cell, where he smokes, drinks, listens to jazz and recounts his search for identity in...
Kindred
Butler, Octavia E. 
Paper Book
**MAJOR TV SERIES COMING SOON TO DISNEY+** Octavia E. Butler's ground-breaking masterpiece, with an original foreword by Ayòbámi Adébáyò. 'A marvel of imagination, empathy and detail' NEW YORK TIMES 'The marker you should judge all other...
The memory librarian and other stories of Dirty computer
Monáe, Janelle 
Paper Book
In The Memory Librarian music, fashion, film and futurist icon Janelle Monáe returns to the Afrofuturistic world of her critically acclaimed album, Dirty Computer, to explore how different threads of liberation - queerness, race, gender plurality, love - become tangled in a totalitarian landscape......
Nubia. Real one
McKinney, L. L. (Leatrice L.), writer. 
Paper Book
Can you be a hero...if society doesn't see you as a person? Nubia has always been a little bit...different. As a baby she showcased Amazonian-like strength by pushing over a tree to rescue her neighbor's cat. But despite her having similar abilities, the world has no problem...
Sister outsider
Lorde, Audre
Audiobook
Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature. In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and...
Skin of the sea
Bowen, Natasha 
Paper Book
This is the story of a great love - a love that will threaten worlds and anger Gods. This is a story that will change history. Simidele is one of the Mami Wata, mermaids duty-bound to collect the souls of those who die at sea and bless their journeys back home to the...
An unkindness of ghosts
Solomon, Rivers 
Ebook
--One of Esquire magazine's 50 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time "Solomon debuts with a raw distillation of slavery, feudalism, prison, and religion that kicks like rotgut moonshine . . . Stunning." --Publishers Weekly, Starred Review Aster has little to offer folks...
White girls
Als, Hilton 
Paper Book
'I defy you to read this book and come away with a mind unchanged' John Jeremiah Sullivan 'Als has a serious claim to be regarded as the next James Baldwin' Observer 'I see how we are all the same, that none of us are white women or black men; rather, we're a...

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