BROOKLYN — Brooklyn-born hip-hop artist Talib Kweli, a co-owner of one of the borough’s longest standing black bookstores, has reopened the shop — online only for now, he said.
Nkiru Books, founded in 1976, operated in Park Slope and later in Prospect Heights, bringing black culture-focused literature to the neighborhood for three decades.
In 1997, Kweli, a Nkiru employee at the time, bought out the shop with his friend and fellow artist Mos Def (known now as Yasiin Bey) and kept it running as an educational center, he said in an Instagram post last week.
Now, Kweli said in the post, he plans to “reignite” Nkiru Books online, using his own website, kweliclub.com, to support the brand. He said he wants to keep the store alive in part because “our community continues to need multicultural education.”
“Now in 2015/16 you would be hard pressed to find a bookstore that is not dominated by Eurocentric ideals about what is important culturally and historically,” he wrote.
The online shop has dozens of titles in 13 categories including “Caribbean Studies,” spirituality and humor. Many books have already sold out, including an autobiography of Miles Davis, "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison, "The Souls of Black Folk" by W.E.B DuBois and “The Klu Klux Spirt” by J.A. Rogers.
Nkiru Books was most recently located in a storefront at 732 Washington Ave. before closing in the early 2000s. The former bookstore location is now a coffee shop.