A Vancouver UBC student is spearheading an initiative to create a Black library she hopes will become a community hub.
Maya Preshyon said she was inspired to create the facility after realizing Vancouver lacked cultural spaces for the Black community that other big cities have.
“We saw the deficit of infrastructure for the Black community and we’re trying to come up with a solution,” Preshyon told Global News.
“As a space, it’s of course a library, but also a community gathering place. It’s going to be a place people can come to study, that people can chill, that people can come and just do work without having to pay for a coffee every hour.”
Preshyon said she also envisions the library filling a community role, where people can host workshops or group therapy sessions.
Ideally, the library will be situated near the former site of Hogan’s Alley, Vancouver’s historically Black neighbourhood that was razed in the 1970s to make way for the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts.
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“Hogan’s Alley was just a place for people of the Black community and the Black diaspora to come together and have their cultural centre,” Preshyon said, adding that the history of the area has received little recognition until recently.
“I am a Black person in Vancouver, and I was never taught about what happened with Hogan’s Alley. I didn’t know that Vancouver had a Black neighbourhood; I didn’t know that Jimi Hendrix was here.”
Preshyon credits local community groups and activists with renewing interest in the Hogan’s Alley, and said it’s a movement she hopes to be a part of.
In the meantime, Presyhon and her collaborators are looking for a location, raising money and trying to collect as many books as possible.
They’re setting up book drives, and have put together a “wish list” of about 150 titles.
“We have a priority on books, literature, works that are written by Black authors, put an emphasis and importance on the Black experience, and works in that vein,” she said.
That said, organizers want the space to be a functional library with as large of a selection as possible, and won’t turn down any book, she said.
Interest in the idea appears to be keen.
Preshyon launched a GoFundMe campaign for the library one week ago, which quickly met its initial goal of $6,000.
She’s now bumped that goal up to $35,000 in hopes of being able to secure a one-year lease for the library when it opens.
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