There is an air of familiarity when you walk through Bed-Stuy’s Gladys Books & Wine, even if you’ve never been there before. When I walked in I couldn’t quite put my finger what it was, maybe it was the music (“Makeda” by Les Nubians played as I perused their inventory), maybe it was the extra warm welcome, maybe it was the faces of authors on the wall who have graced many vision boards over the years and covers of books that are akin to bibles. Whatever it was, it brought comfort.
A Grandmother’s Legacy
In a conversation with owner Tiffany Dockery, she reminded me of the Toni Morrison quote, “I think freedom ideally is being able to choose your responsibility. Not, not having any responsibilities, but being able to choose which things you want to be responsible for.” While Dockery continues to work full-time in tech, the responsibility that she has chosen is providing a safe third space for her community, like her grandmother Gladys provided for her.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about why grandparents, grandmothers in particular, are so important to Black people and what it is about grandmother figures that signal Blackness in a way that is unique and different.” She tells me that though this has been on her mind, she doesn’t have the answer just yet and like any book lover and seller, she refers to another author to illustrate her point. “Isabel Wilkerson’s ‘The Warmth of Other Suns’ talks about African American migration stories, in terms of the Great Migration, and this idea of thinking of the Black American experience through an immigration lens. Often in immigration narratives there’s this elderly figure who is a tie back to the old world. In many ways that was my grandmother.”
Dockery’s old world is Mississippi, and even though she was born and raised in Chicago, her grandmother’s experience in the southern state impacted how she was raised in the midwest. A big part of her grandmother’s impact was a lesson on the importance of community. “Before there was a third space, there were people’s homes. I grew up in a lot of neighbor’s homes — people who were friends of the family from the same town in Mississippi that were [now] living in Chicago,” she explains. The homey feel that she experienced then was something she wanted to bring to the bookstore and wine bar.
When we talked about the decor, she noted that the upstairs bookstore is academic, while the downstairs wine bar, adorned with beaded curtains provides a darker, more sultry vibe, a “particular auntie aesthetic” if you will. The goal she told me was your auntie’s living room and her basement, and as we laughed about basement parties, I realized what the air of familiarity was. Though my ancestors were from Jamaica, there are some things about the Black experience that you just get regardless of where your “old world” is, which makes third spaces like Gladys feel like home.
The experience I felt is something Dockery wants for everyone who walks through her doors, especially Black lesbians. “It’s a hard world, we want people to feel good when they come in.” As we reflected on the resurgence of brick-and-mortar bookstores and the experience that Gladys provides for their customers, Dockery unapologetically named who her space is for. “POC is to Black, what queer is to lesbian. POC and queer are great umbrella terms but sometimes specificity gets lost,” she points out.
“Our selection is the stuff that is usually on the side in other places. It’s given a center place here. That means something.” She’s right. Books I once had to actively seek out like “Bad Feminist,” “The Body Liberation Project” and “Hood Feminism” graced the shelves so prominently, that I was reminded that Black women should never be an afterthought, even when others try their best to make us feel like we are.
Rest, Redemption & Resistance
For Dockery, “being in the presence of books is uniquely soothing. Books have redeemed me. When I didn’t have money to leave the west side of Chicago, I could go anywhere in a book.” She shares that, while emphasizing her passion for providing spaces for Black women to rest. She goes on to say “I live in a country that made it illegal for my ancestors to read. There’s a special relationship that Black people generally and African Americans in particular, have with the written word.”
In addition to affirming our existence and providing comfort and/or escape, reading books can be an act of resistance. In fact, according to “Black-Owned” by Char Adams, the first known Black-owned bookstore in the United States was created for that reason. When abolitionist David Ruggles opened his doors in 1834, he intended to resist inequity while providing community for young Black people.
Now, almost two hundred years later, Dockery is doing the same, while addressing the unique challenges we face today. “In an age of AI and an age where it feels like we are very disconnected, books are our way back to empathy, but also, a way to resist fast knowledge. Instead of a five minute video, I’m going to take my time and immerse myself into a narrative. I think it’s something we inherently feel drawn to, because of the amount of change we’re navigating in this particular social moment.”
When I think about the current social climate, I often feel like while there are folks who are now outraged by their current experience with discrimination, particularly classism, Black folks are not new to this. We’ve been in the trenches and have always figured out a way through, with each other as a community.
For Us, By Us
“I do feel like there’s a thing about acknowledgement and Black communication, where it’s like even if I’m not a fan, I’m going to acknowledge you. I think that’s where the head nod comes from. It’s like in a world where you’re not acknowledged, I’m going to take the time to acknowledge you. I think that being a Black business and being queer business, [there is an] unfortunate reputation around bad customer service. When we talk about community, it starts from these interactions, how we treat each other. We can’t build a community if we don’t treat each other well. The goal is when people walk in they feel held, they feel welcomed.”
Community and the acknowledgement Black folks give one another, mean everything to Dockery. She spoke fondly of the community that welcomed her with open arms in Bed-Stuy and her desire to not only live there, but truly belong. Her thank you for the warm welcome is the bookstore that makes everyone feel like they walked right into their auntie’s living room.
“A hyper-local one-to-one connection can actually be more powerful than a platform that touches millions of people because of the quality of that connection… I come from a place where people would just stop by to hang out. You know, they didn’t have an agenda, it wasn’t on the calendar. Our social lives are [now] ruled by Google Calendar. We don’t have casual, easy, intimacy, and I think the role of a third space is that. I don’t need a reservation. I don’t even need to know what’s going on, that I can just roll up, and I’ll know there’ll be something.”
At Gladys, that something can be chatting over tea with a friend upstairs, grabbing a glass of orange wine and some popcorn downstairs, or programming on a random night that centers “the work of Black lesbian feminist politics, Black queer women writers, or more broadly Black women writers, especially ones who, even if they’re not lesbians themselves embody, the politics of Black lesbian feminism.”
“The reality of America is that your zipcode dictates your life’s outcomes. So I feel I’ve been very blessed. My spiritual practice is that you got to do something with God’s blessings, pay it forward.” Gladys Books & Wine is Tiffany Dockery’s offering. It is her dream realized. It is the continuation of her grandmother’s legacy that began so many years ago in Mississippi. It is the principle of sankofa brought to life.
In a time when folks are chronically online, Gladys provides a real opportunity for kinship and community building. Check out the unique ways Saint James Libations and A Safe Space Mentor are doing the same as part of our Centering Third Spaces Cover Series.
Credits:
Photographer: Breanna Nichelle
Written by: Ashley Fern
Deputy Editor: Blue-Waverly Wahome
Head of Editorial & Content: Naomi Brooks
Director of Music & Culture: Skylar Rochon
Producer: Kaya Nova
Production Assistant: Nzingha Florence
