Nonfiction by Jeannine Cook, reviewed by Jo Ann Zimmerman
SHUT UP AND READ: A MEMOIR FROM HARRIETT’S BOOKSHOP (Amistad Books)

In March of 2020, Walmart workers became essential, toilet paper disappeared, and we all forgot to unmute ourselves on Zoom. Most humans were at home, much to the delight of their dogs (and dismay of cats like mine). Jeannine Cook was sleeping on the floor of the North Philadelphia bookshop she had opened just six weeks earlier, terrified her new venture would fail before it got off the ground. Yet later that same year, Oprah Daily included her business, Harriett’s Bookshop, among the most-beloved Black-owned bookstores in the U.S. And with the help of the ancestors, Jeannine Cook and her shop are still thriving today. 

But I’m getting ahead of the story. 

That’s easy to do with the inspiring tales told in Cook’s new book Shut Up and Read: A Memoir from Harriett’s Bookshop. Written as a series of journal entries over a span of several months in the summer of 2024, Cook’s narrative, at once practical and poetical, travels across continents, back and forth in time, and out into spiritualistic spheres. Aided by the ancestors Ida B. Wells, Josephine Baker, and Harriet Tubman (for whom the flagship store is named), Cook relates her road to realizing her dream of owning a bookshop. 

Following an early childhood in Brooklyn, Cook’s chronically ill father and blind, librarian mother moved their three daughters to Virginia, where the author developed a love for literature. Eventually, she earned a scholarship to the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. From there, she taught creative writing classes, developed a curriculum on racism for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), and, finally, rented a storefront in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia. But the office she planned to open there became instead her iconic bookstore, at the insistence of her spirit sister Harriet. 

This loose chronology unfolds in bits and pieces as the journal records the events of July–October 2024—a period at once frenetic, fertile, and somehow typical of Cook’s remarkable life. Over one four-week span beginning in Paris, where she’d gone to write her first novel, Cook opened a pop-up bookshop; held a symposium at American University of Paris celebrating Josephine Baker’s life and work; flew back to Philadelphia to close on the purchase of the bookshop she’d been previously renting and finish renovations she’d begun that spring; then returned to Paris and completed all but the final chapter of her debut novel, It’s Me They Follow. All while battling a bout of Graves’ disease.

But don’t catch your breath yet. Cook does all of this in addition to the work of operating Harriett’s Bookshop; a sister store, Ida’s, in Collingswood, NJ, which opened in 2021; and being a dedicated community builder and social justice activist. The memoir explores how this work in particular manifests in her shop, particularly through her staff of “Youth Conductors”—young authors, artists, and activists who work as paid interns, helping customers in the shop and distributing books at local schools and protest marches. 

One particular anecdote illustrates how Cook brings together her work as a community builder, activist, and bookseller. Following the murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd in the first half of 2020, Black Lives Matter protests had spread across the country and eventually around the world. In May, Cook’s Youth Conductors wanted to make “I can’t breathe” signs to carry as they marched with demonstrators in Philadelphia. After much conversation, Cook convinced them to instead distribute books by and about Malcolm X and Harriet Tubman, sharing photos and videos on social media of the Conductors displaying and handing out books, with the caption: “We flooding the streets thanks to an anonymous donor. Free copies of Harriet Tubman & Autobiography of Malcolm X in downtown Philly. How you protest is the protest.”

Part of what makes the memoir so breathtaking—and breathless—is seeing just how many hats one person can wear. But at the end of the day, Jeannine Cook is a shopkeeper, and as she often says, “A shopkeeper tells folks who say books are dead to shut up and read.” 

If I were you, I’d take her advice.

Shut Up and Read by Jeannine Cook was published by Amistad in March 2026. 

Jo Ann Zimmerman is a lifelong educator, most recently on the faculty of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where she lives with her amazing husband and indifferent cat. She has written for the Georgetown Review, Sportscribe Magazine, and other publications.

Read more from Cleaver’s Book Reviews.