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Fundraising a Permanent Home for Philly’s Harriett’s Bookshop
Inspired by Harriett Tubman, Owner Jeannine Cook Wants to Realize a Dream
Harriett’s Bookshop, named for American abolitionist and political activist Harriet Tubman, celebrates women authors, women artists, and women activists. The shop is located at 258 E. Girard Ave, in Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood.
The popular neighborhood shop stocks new and used books for readers of all ages by authors like Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston as well as by newer writers.
The store’s current lease runs out in July. Although owner Jeannine Cook could have renewed the lease for another two years, she’s decided to dream bigger — she’s raising money to buy her shop a building.
Arguably, it’s what Tubman herself would have wanted her to do.
“I do not want to be a slave nor a sharecropper,” Cook explains on her GoFundMe page. “As it stands, I am a modern day sharecropper bringing energy and investing money in a location that I cannot pass down to my children. But we can change that.”
