Posts
Rosa Duffy designed the shop and reading room to be a place for people to interact with history that is often overlooked, says Jewel Wicker, entertainment reporter.
 |
| Inside For Keeps Photo: courtesy of Rosa Duffy |
There is, perhaps, no street in Atlanta more fitting than Auburn Avenue to house For Keeps bookstore.
Located in the historically black Sweet Auburn District, Rosa Duffy, 28, has opened a place she hopes will invite everyone, but especially black people, to come in and stay awhile. Inside the space, located at 171 Auburn Avenue, Duffy adjusts the books on display, wearing a caramel turtleneck, wide-legged blue jeans, and patent leather boots. A Kanga cloth from Tanzania that reads “Hongera Barack Obama,” (Swahili for “congratulations”) with a monochrome photo of the former president, hangs on display on one wall. Duffy’s own prints, sourced from old magazines and newspapers, including the Atlanta Daily World, are on display on the opposite wall.
For Keeps Bookstore is more than a place for visitors to purchase rare and classic black books. Duffy designed it to also be a reading room where people can stop in and interact with history that is often overlooked or placed in the bottom of the dollar bins at other bookstores.
Although the space has only been open for about a week, Rosa Duffy’s desire to open a bookstore was sparked over a decade ago by her introduction to Soulbook, a black periodical published in the 1960s and ’70s. She first encountered copies in her father’s personal literature collection and, around the age of 18, she began using scans of them for her art. (Duffy, who recently worked for Atlanta artist Radcliffe Bailey, mostly works with sculpture and paper.)...
Duffy says she’s hoping For Keeps will help dispel the myth that black people aren’t interested in learning about their history.
“The reality is, [some of] this stuff is in other spaces,” she says. “Some of the books that I have out here right now are in an exhibit at Emory [University], but it’s not inviting. It’s an atmosphere where you feel like you have to be a certain type of person to go in there and look at stuff.”
Read more...
Source: Atlanta Magazine
