This Saturday, Crosstown Concourse and Cafe Noir will present Memphis’ first-ever Literature Is Liberating Festival, a free, communitywide festival celebrating Black voices in literature. The event, which is open to all ages, will feature vendors, author discussions, panels, and activities and readings for kids.
“The mission,” Jasmine Settles, owner of Cafe Noir, explains, “is to enrich the community through literature by uplifting the mind, nourishing the body, and liberating the spirit.” And that same mission carries within her cafe/bookstore, set to open this summer, which will focus on books by BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ authors. “The main goal is to highlight marginalized voices, … to kind of give folks the space to be able to explore these authors and explore marginalized voices because oftentimes the content that’s presented to us in school leads us to be kind of bored and uninterested [without diverse voices to capture imaginations and reflect different backgrounds].”
As such, Settles, who rediscovered the importance of diverse storytelling while pursuing her master’s degree at the University of Memphis, wants to spark this interest in the community. “Memphis has one of the lowest literacy rates in Tennessee. I wanna get folks more involved with reading literature and ways that we can improve our community through doing so.”
The festival on Saturday will feature a spoken word performance by local poet Nubia Yasin, reading from her recently released collection of poetry The Blood and Body. “It’s a self-portrait,” Yasin says of her collection. “It’s about love and all its shadows, and how I learned that from my family. … It deals a lot with the theme of home and what that means and what that looks like, who are the players in like this thing called home.” This will be the first time Yasin will be able to speak publicly about her book, and she will be accompanied by musician Desire during the performance.
Also, on the festival’s schedule, is a performance by Hattiloo Theatre and a panel on African-American literature, presented by professors Jacqueline Trimble, Shelby Crosby, and Terrence Tucker. Plus, Michelle Duster, great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells, will discuss her writings on Wells in conjunction with an Indie Memphis screening of the documentary Facing Down Storms: Memphis and the Making of Ida B. Wells. Indie Memphis will also screen 1970’s Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris, a portrait of the writer during his time abroad.
Meanwhile, young writers and readers can take part in a reading and a writing workshop with Ali Manning, a food scientist whose first book Can I Play with My Food? was published in early 2022. Librarians from Memphis Public Libraries will also make an appearance for readings, and a free craft-making station will be open throughout the day in the Central Atrium. For more information and a full schedule, visit crosstownconcourse.com/events.
Literature is Liberating Festival, Saturday, February 4, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., free.