With every book bought and read at the first annual Freadom Festival, founder Nanea Woods helped create a new story around celebrating Black literacy and community.
On June 18, community members gathered at Peninsula Park for the Freadom Festival, Portland's first Black literary festival. The event was the brainchild of Woods, founder of Prose Before Bros, a book club for women of color. Woods started the group in 2018, designed to create space for women of color to connect and talk about books, primarily written and featuring people of color.
Although the book club has surpassed 400 members, Woods wanted to expand the book club idea into a large-scale event, like a festival. After a year of sitting on the idea, Woods penned the festival into her New Year's resolutions list and began planning early this year.
"I wanted to build something that included more people, and add on this idea of building a community around books bigger, and include more of the Portland community — and bring us together to celebrate books," she said.
"I just wanted to be able to acknowledge the fact that Black people reading is revolutionary — it's a rebellion, it's resistance."
The festival celebrated and acknowledged Black literacy, businesses, and the community through various vendors, food carts and live music. Woods said the event also honors the people who made it possible for her to read a book, which is why she held the festival on the cusp of Juneteenth — a nationally recognized holiday commemorating the freedom of enslaved Black people 157 years prior.
On June 19, 1865, more than two-and-half years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which abolished slavery, the last slaves in Galveston, Texas, were freed. In 2021, President Joe Biden declared Juneteenth a national holiday.
Woods said celebrating Juneteenth and celebrating books are braided with one another.
Until the 1830s, there were strict restrictions on enslaved people's ability to read and write. Enslavers saw literacy as a threat and feared that educated enslaved peoples could risk an overthrow of the institution of enslavement and, therefore, their financial outlay in it. History.com estimates that only 10% of enslaved African Americans were literate.
Yet, many African Americans found ways to educate themselves, and literacy was later used as a tool in the rise of abolitionism.
"So many of our leaders made strides in ways for us to be able to have the ability to go to school, learn, pick up a book — I just wanted to be able to acknowledge the fact that Black people reading is revolutionary — it's a rebellion, it's resistance,” Woods said. “And books are a key to gaining knowledge and empowerment and that is freedom.”
For the festival's tagline, Woods paid homage to civil rights advocate Malcolm X with the phrase, "Read by any means necessary," a stylized quote from his 1964 speech.
"(The phrase) just encapsulates the energy and the spirit of this festival," Woods said. "It honors what our ancestors have done, and paved the way for us, and how we are grateful for the work that they've done."
She also said the tagline acknowledges the substantial work that still needs to be done for Black, Indigenous and other people of color to be represented in books and literary agencies. Woods points to the fact that most significant publishing houses and the authors they represent are white, and paired with low literacy rates among Black youth — it can be a dangerous cocktail.
She also noted book bans heavily pull BIPOC authors and LGBTQ+ centered books from the shelves of libraries and schools.
"They're essentially erasing those voices and silencing them,” Woods said. “We need those voices more than anything and we need them to be accessible. We're centering Black and brown people, but this festival is for everyone to come and learn and celebrate and acknowledge.”
Changing the story around BIPOC literature
In crafting the lineup for the festival, Woods cold-called just about every literary organization and business that she could think of. And the Portland community showed up for her.
At the festival, literary organizations ranging from publishing houses to independent bookstores set up stations to show that books are for everyone.
While the upbeat rhythms of Redbone's "Come and Get Your Love" swam through the rainy afternoon, Edith Johnson offered a bit of sunshine to the children who stopped by her table.
Johnson started her book company, Sunrise Books, about eight months ago. Although the literary store shelves books of all genres, it focuses on ensuring children see themselves represented in their literature.
“(Children) seeing themselves in a book validates them and affirms them more than we realize,” Johnson said. “I have a five-year-old whose hair is different from her classmates; her skin is different. So when I am reading a book to her, and she sees a little girl is Black and a princess, she can say: 'despite my hair texture and skin color, I can be a princess too.' So (representation in books) opens up the windows of possibility.”
A few stalls down from Johnson, a handful of festival-attendees huddle around a display of colorful book covers. The setup was curated by Third Eye Books, the only Black-owned bookstore in Oregon.
"It is empowering for people to read books that have a reflection of who they are, and their community,” said Michelle Lewis, who co-owns the bookstore with her husband, Charles Hannah. “It lets us know that Black and brown authors are a part of the literacy environment."
Lewis, who is also a member of the Prose Before Bros book club, came out to the event to showcase BIPOC authors and characters because they symbolize empowerment and education.
"When people come into the bookstore, some have never read a book by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison or Zora Neale Hurston, so that lets us know that there's a definite need for (representation) so that we can expose people to some of those great authors," Lewis said, wearing a T-shirt that listed the names of Black women authors. "And that they are a legacy that left behind part of our history."
The festival also showcased community organizations providing books to marginalized groups. Books to Prisoners, a Portland nonprofit providing books for prisoners, hosted a book drive. Street Books, a mobile library service delivering literature to Portland’s unhoused, also showed up to support the festival.
"One of the things about Street Books is that we always want our bikes to be filled with books that represent the people that we see on the street. And unfortunately, that's disproportionately people of color. So a Black book festival is long-overdue," Diana Rempe, community outreach director for Street Books, said.
The festival offered a book swap, where people could expand their home libraries with BIPOC authors.
Under one of the park's gazebos, books of every genre blanketed foldable tables. Community members thumbed through the pages of books ranging from former first lady Michelle Obama's memoir "Becoming" to children's books that explore the lives of civil rights advocates.
Woods said bookstores and publishing houses across the nation donated hundreds of books. Some of the biggest names in New York donated books from their Black imprints for the occasion. Local entities also showed their support.
A Kid's Book About, a Portland-based publishing company that creates children's books explaining complex topics like systemic racism, hosted a children's story time.
"These books are empowerment for kids," said operations manager Melanie Wilkins. "A lot of these things talked about are considered harder topics but we make sure to not include pictures in our books so children use their imagination. These books are supposed to be read with an adult and then have conversations about the harder subjects."
Teána Edwards, a Washington County resident and mother of two daughters, attended the event for the storytime.
"There isn't much representation at their schools in Washington County, and I knew that here they would be around other people who would look like them," Edwards said.
The festival also featured two other speakers, Kesha Ajose Fisher, author of "No God like a Mother," and "This is My America" author Kim Johnson.
"Let us forever remember our fortune to be alive in this time, surrounded by the beauty of a diverse planet and people and all it has to offer," Fisher said during her talk. "Let our children find their best selves within pages of books placed before them. And let us celebrate our connections endlessly … because it's the one thing no one can take from us."
Despite the heavy downpour teasing the festival-goers throughout the afternoon, the event welcomed a steady stream of people. Woods said she was in awe of the literary community and their commitment to showing up for others.
"Portland is one of the most literate cities in the county, and our library system has the largest digital circulation in the world,” Woods said. “We are a city of readers, and I just wanted to prove that we are a city of Black readers too."
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