Columbia's Black Tea Bookshop will prize great Black writing through pop-up approach

Candace Hulsizer cherishes the exact moment, a sort of dawning, when a reader encounters someone like themselves — or their neighbors — within a story.

That awareness arrives with a feeling, one Hulsizer chased in the classroom for nearly 20 years as a teacher. Now she chases that feeling toward her dream project. Black Tea Bookshop is a homegrown, handpicked bookstore that especially "delights in the work of Black authors and celebrates Black joy," as its Facebook page notes.

Hulsizer plans to bring excellent Black literature to Columbia through pop-up events, residences within given spaces and online platforms such as Bookshop, where Black Tea already makes its presence felt.

We live our lives in stories

Like most literary disciples, Hulsizer can't conjure memories of existing, let alone flourishing, before books. The St. Louis native's earliest, clearest scenes place her within area libraries.

While her mother studied for professional development, "I just lived in the stacks," she said.

Nourished by the sweet taste of page after page, Hulsizer developed twinned loves: reading, then writing her own stories. She gazes back now, though, and sees a dearth of Black authors in her young life. Only in college did she enter this fullness, coming under the spell of iconic writers such as Toni Morrison.

Her work as a teacher and reading specialist for Columbia Public Schools drove home a need for more diverse libraries. Early in her tenure, Hulsizer sifted through her second-grade classroom library, recognizing a lack of authors and characters of color.

The University of Missouri graduate also began master's-level work the same year her oldest daughter crossed kindergarten's threshold. The revelations kept coming, kept mirroring one another: Hulsizer's daughter wasn't reading enough authors of color; neither were the kids she nurtured Monday through Friday.

"My kids were from everywhere," she said, but met a very finite set of stories. We live our lives in these stories, and Hulsizer feared the inevitable ripples.

"We talk all this time about how important reading is, how important literacy is," she said. "So then if you give me a book and I’m never in that book, what’s going to happen is I’m going to say, 'You said this is important, but I’m not in here. So what does that mean about me? What does that mean about my story?'"

Hulsizer wrote a grant and curated a list of books to build out the class library. The effect was immediate: Students noticed characters with traits like their own — or like a friend's. Kids are built to notice, Hulsizer said, and they piled lovely observations all around them.

Once you practice noticing, any number of meaningful conversations will follow, she said.

A dream with every reader in mind

And like most literary disciples, Hulsizer harbored someday visions of opening her own bookstore; visions stoked by every next book she read and by fun, fanciful sneak previews in films such as "You've Got Mail." Conversations with family and trusted friends spurred Hulsizer to bring the dream into being sooner than later.

When Black bibliophiles — and other readers who love great Black writers — set foot in a bookstore, they might eventually find what they're looking for, Hulsizer said. But it's an active search, requiring patience and initiative.

Readers who visit Black Tea Bookshop will immediately sense they're in the right place, surrounded by titles they desire.

"I’m not only welcome here, but this was made with me in mind," Hulsizer said of the atmosphere she wants to create.

Shoring up the business side of her dream, Hulsizer sought out other Black booksellers and women booksellers. She spent several days shadowing staff at St. Louis shop The Novel Neighbor, and opened dialogues with booksellers across the Midwest and in the Pacific Northwest.

With every conversation, at every conference, concerns about a competition mindset faded away as Hulsizer found true, affirming colleagues. Here in Columbia, principals at indie bookshops Skylark and Yellow Dog have pledged support, and even space, for Hulsizer and Black Tea.

'We write that too'

Hulsizer's curatorial vision is both intimate — words delivered from her hands to a reader's — and expansive, stretching across genre. She champions authors, like the late Morrison, whose place in the canon is secure as well as this generation's formative storytellers.

A rich reading list spills from Hulsizer's lips when she considers authors who fit the Black Tea aesthetic. She speaks of Jacqueline Woodson, who writes deeply felt books for children and young adults; expressed kinship with the vision of highly acclaimed author Jason Reynolds, another sage for younger readers; novelists such as Brit Bennett ("The Vanishing Half") and literary polymath Honorée Fanonne Jeffers ("The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois") rise to top of mind; as do science-fiction royals Octavia Butler and N.K. Jemisin.

Reading on behalf of the bookshop stretches Hulsizer's own literary interests, leading her to more science-fiction, more cookbooks and even more children's literature than she already absorbs.

"We write that too," she wants people to realize as they thumb the bindings of Black Tea books.

Not just a bookshop, but a reading experience

The tea in Black Tea's name is more than a mere symbol. "Cozy" is the word family members use to describe Hulsizer, and tea is very much a part of that vibe. Its slow and encompassing warmth, wispy aroma, and taste all hearten her when sitting down to read, she said.

Hulsizer is currently collaborating with two teashops, Ora Teahouse and Bakery in North Carolina and St. Louis' Big Heart Tea Co., to create and discover blends Black Tea can offer.

Hulsizer plans to start with samples for customers, eventually graduating to tea by the cup and sachets.

Black Tea will go "where people are," Hulsizer said. That no doubt means pop-up events in galleries and other retail spaces. And the bookshop will be in residence when The Shops at Sharp End opens its business incubator in Columbia's historic Black neighborhood.

Hulsizer is out of the classroom, but still teaches those in her orbit. Not in an obvious or didactic way, but by tending their curiosity — which is an act of affection. The quiet revelations that once spread across her students' faces can be experienced by readers of all ages. She wants that for everyone.

Summing up her purpose, Hulsizer referred to the work of scholar Rudine Sims Bishop, who said books can be windows, mirrors or sliding glass doors. If books might be all those things, why not a bookshop?

"It will be a mirror to reflect you — you get to see yourself in these positive ways and different ways; or it is a window into somebody else’s world," Hulsizer said of Black Tea. "For all of us, it could be that glass door that lets us enter somebody else’s world."

Learn more about Black Tea Bookshop, and keep an eye out for future events, at https://www.facebook.com/blackteabookshop. Shop online now at https://bookshop.org/shop/blackteabookshop.

Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. He's on Twitter/X @aarikdanielsen.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Black Tea Bookshop is bringing great Black literature to Columbia