Literature and Liberation: A Bookstore and Gathering Place Comes to Fields Corner

I arrived at a side road intersecting the bustling Dorchester Ave and saw family homes, a high school, and a hair salon. Nestled at the corner of the street leading into the main road was 1463 Dorchester Ave, the new home of justBook-ish: an upcoming independent bookstore located in the historic Fields Corner business district on the ground floor of a recently completed affordable housing complex. When I entered the site with co-owners Porsha Olayiwola and Bing Broderick in March, contractors from the Black-owned construction company Erise Builders were still laying the foundation. “This is the bar, this is the stage, and these are the bookshelves,” mused Olayiwola, gesturing toward different areas in the space that were at the time just blocks of wood and tape. Olayiwola and Broderick are both Fields Corner residents who have felt the lack of a bookstore in their neighborhood. Now, with justBook-ish slated to open in August, they are reimagining what a Bostonian bookstore looks like, where it lives, and who it serves.

Boston poet laureate Olayiwola and former Haley House director Broderick are designing the space with sound and performance in mind, reflecting the spirit in which they met. Ten years ago, Olayiwola and Janae Johnson brought a Haley House poetry slam idea (now known as The House Slam) to Broderick. Olayiwola and Broderick have collaborated ever since, working on projects like the Haley House Block Party and Roxbury Poetry Festival. In 2021, the co-organizers began dreaming about a bookstore, and more precisely, a “literary gathering space,” filled with writers that “challenge political paradigms.”

While Olayiwola and Broderick called this place “The Book Shop” in earlier stages, they ultimately chose a name for the store that is filled with the intentions that ground it—and that signals some play. justBook-ish revolves around social justice, which is where the “just” comes from. The added hyphen in Book-ish (usually “Bookish,” as in fond of books) means that among the books, you’ll find many other things too.

The bookstore is the commercial side of Words as Worlds, Olayiwola and Broderick’s budding nonprofit that will come to life at justBook-ish through ongoing cultural programming tied to the store’s “culturally curated, radically influenced, locally inspired” collection. That programming—curated with and by community members—might include spoken-word events, DJs, student bands, roundtable discussions, and album-listening parties. Olayiwola and Broderick are also imagining publishing workshops and opportunities for local writers.

“What we imagine to be the soul of the space is the programming, the community gathering, the events that support folks in a multitude of ways—supporting artists in a professional setting but also supporting community members with nourishment by way of cultural engagement,” said Olayiwola. “Things will be tied to the mission of changing the landscape of publishing and changing the landscape of literature and books, making sure folks who are traditionally or historically marginalized have a space.”

While Boston is known widely as an intellectual city, neighborhoods like Dorchester, Mattapan, and Hyde Park (which I call home) are often left out of this narrative. In fact, none of these places have bookstores. You’re likely heading to JP or trekking to Newbury Street, or perhaps you frequent what until now was Boston’s only Black-owned bookshop, Frugal Bookstore, in Nubian Square, Roxbury. Olayiwola cited a February 2024 WalletHub report that named Massachusetts the most educated state in the US: “My only response to that is What does that mean when there’s not a bookstore in particular neighborhoods?”

In a city overflowing with universities, we often mistake academia as the primary indicator and incubator of knowledge. The WalletHub report did indeed measure education by counting degrees. This limits how we think about—and invest in—where we learn. People who live in the margins, multiple diplomas or not, defy this constraint simply by way of existing: we carry and share knowledge in various forms wherever and however we can. Now it’s past time to locate ourselves more firmly in alternative spaces that are our own. “We want our programming to reflect all kinds of education,” shared Broderick. “I think that being an institutional city, we think of education in one way. We should be thinking of it much more broadly.”

Words as Worlds board chair, award-winning Boston educator, and Ashmont resident Dr. Kimberly N. Parker—who authored Literacy Is Liberation: Working Toward Justice Through Culturally Relevant Teaching (2022)—shared, “I think that those pillars [culturally curated, radically influenced, locally inspired] mean that we actually have a place that’s for us…. [A place] where we can practice all of our literacies because people are literate in all of these ways. And we can practice it in this intergenerational manner.”

Olayiwola and Broderick are thinking about the “people who live here, people who have lived here, and people who will come in the future,” shared Olayiwola. With the Fields Corner library under construction over the next few years, justBook-ish aims to fill the need for a literary space in Dorchester. Hopefully, students from the high school down the street will wander into the store and find something they need, and elderly community members will commune by the window seats. And as local organizations like Dorchester Art Project close their doors, justBook-ish may become a home for artists from near and far. Parker shared, “I think that they [Olayiwola and Broderick] are intentionally thinking about who are all of the people who might come into that bookstore, how might they all feel welcome? How might they all want to stay and linger and read in these really powerful ways?”

Like many other cities in the US, Boston has a “third place” problem, especially in our neighborhoods. These are spaces for gathering outside of home or work that invite spontaneous connections or provide a sense of community, like cafés, libraries, or recreation centers. In response, organizations like the Design Studio for Social Intervention (Dorchester), Boston Ujima Project (currently in Nubian Square), and now Words as Worlds via justBook-ish have been working to create spaces that respond to local needs.

Broderick and Olayiwola are thinking carefully about how the store’s hours can fill a void in the neighborhood and offer an alternative place for community members to gather after other nearby businesses have closed for the day. They currently plan to be open from 2:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. during the week and from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on the weekends. The shop will also serve food by local chefs and curated beverages, including coffee, smoothies, beer, and wine.

With liberation at the core of the store’s mission, having space for social interactions can lay the groundwork for political organizing, as visitors riff on literature to respond to the current moment and co-build freer neighborhoods, cities, worlds. Parker pondered, “What are the possibilities that justBook-ish can hold for getting people together … to do all of the events that I have to cross the river for? No more. We get to do that right here.”

As Olayiwola, Broderick, and I left the bookstore that day, we looked at the overhead Red Line train crossing the avenue. The bookstore is just a three-minute walk from Fields Corner station.

Fields Corner residents voted for the bookstore over other business proposals for the retail space, including a café, and subsequently purchased shares of justBook-ish. Olayiwola and Broderick continue to take their community seriously as collaborators. Last year, they held a feedback session where any interested folks met with them over Zoom and helped design the space. The co-founders dreamt of a radical bookstore that feels like a whimsical study—one that you might find in a house. It was a lively discussion with strong feelings around lighting, seating, and even wavy-versus-straight bookshelves. Afterward, they worked with local cooperative design firm CoEverything to immediately implement the feedback.

Olayiwola and Broderick will keep holding meetings with folks who email them with ideas about what they can do with justBook-ish. And their staff—who they see as their “immediate community”—will co-create the space, too.

In advance of the store’s opening, select titles are for sale from justBook-ish.com and Words as Worlds is still raising funds to fill the shelves with thousands of books through a GoFundMe campaign. They wrote in the fundraiser description, “We want to make sure this space is funded by and belongs to community members. Regardless if you have $1,000 or $1 you’ve a right to this space and it is yours.”