Nestled in a charming and welcoming artist’s house in the heart of Ouakam (Dakar) is AWU, a remarkable independent library whose name means echo, relay, and chorus in Wolof. It was conceived in 2020 by multifaceted editor and Archive Books founder Chiara Figone and is cared for by a team of incredible women, including librarian and researcher Kany Sarr.

AWU is a feminist library housing the writings and stories of writers, activists, artists, and other cultural practitioners from the global majority. Envisioned as a safe place that would echo the voices of historically marginalized women while also being a space for open dialogue, attentive listening, and the exploration of political thought, AWU approaches every gathering from a feminist, queer, anticolonial, and multisensory lens. Folks gather in intergenerational circles to address issues of identity, gender, sexuality, immigration, and other political matters that affect our sense of freedom. Collective readings are organized to study and celebrate the works within the library; various cultural practitioners are invited to exchange ideas. AWU offers a diverse and enriching range of activations while still providing a sanctuary for visitors to immerse themselves in literature that will nurture and sharpen their minds. Choosing this selection of books was not an easy task but was worth it.

Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party, Stephen Shames et Ericka Huggings (2022)

Most of us have heard about Fred Hampton, Huey Newton, and Eldridge Cleaver. We’ve also heard the voice of Angela Davis, read the words of Assata Shakur, and witnessed, through archival footage, the directness of Kathleen Cleaver. Yet not many of us know the names of Malaika Abernathy, Sheba Haven, Elaine Young X, Betty Sio, or Yolanda “Yo-Yo” Smith—to name a few women Black Panthers. When it comes to revolutionary liberation movements, who is worthy of being remembered? The frontliners and disrupters, or those involved behind the scenes: organizers, healers, teachers, cooks, and so on and so forth? Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party is a stunning tribute led by a collection of black-and-white photographs by Stephen Shames – some never published before – of women members of the Black Panther Party. Ericka Huggings, herself an early Party member, has written a new essay, which is presented alongside intimate contributions from over fifty other former members. Thus the lives of over 300 women who were the backbone of the Party are brought to light. They must become part of our collective memory.

La Parole aux Négresses, Awa Thiam (2024)

In the early 2000s, it’s said that the physical copy of La Parole Aux Négresses (1978) was so hard to get hold of that doubts arose about its actual existence. Lucky readers would have a copy of the PDF version that circulated from computer to computer across university campuses. Awa Thiam’s work on Francophone African feminism was too unsettling for the context within which she was writing, yet it has been vital for liberation struggles. Forty-six years after its first publication, this founding text of intersectional and decolonial feminist thinking has miraculously resurfaced. Not one but two publishing houses have reissued it: Les Éditions Divergence in France and Saaraba Editions in Senegal. For the launch of the Senegalese edition, Awu Library co-organized with Saaraba a collective reading and conversation with scholar Kani Diop – an interview with whom forms the book’s afterword. I experienced the event as a multivocal call and response session and an exercise of deep listening to African women whose voices from a not-so-far-away past still resonate.

Entrer en pédagogie antiraciste : D’une lutte syndicale à des pratiques émancipatrices, SUD Éducation 93 (2023)

This book is a great resource that has its place in every learning environment and beyond. Resulting from a series of antiracist training workshops led by French education trade union SUD Éducation 93 between 2017 and 2022, and inspired by theories of emancipatory pedagogy from thinkers like Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and Amílcar Cabral, this book addresses forms of institutionalized racism within the French educational system and shares antiracist tools that can be practically merged with existing learning methods for the teaching community. Both a beautiful book (published by Shed Publishing) and a pioneering work in this field in France, it includes contributions from sociologists Saîd Bouamama, Ugo Palheta, and Fabrice Dhume, among others, and tackles multiple ideas – such as decolonial teaching techniques in history and geography classes, solidarity between racialized staff, and ethnomathematics.

Feminist Parenting: Perspectives from Africa and Beyond, sous la direction de Rama Salla Dieng et Andrea O’Reilly (2020)

“After a long and difficult labour, I was fearful when the nurse came to me saying she was so sorry to tell me… — my fevered mind immediately thought that perhaps my child was stillborn or had complications. When I asked her anxiously what was the matter with my child, she said “You have a baby girl” adding reassuringly that “Your next child will be a boy!”

This is a fragment from Intuitive Feminist Parenting, an essay written by women’s right activist Jael Silliman which is published alongside thirty-two other intimate, touching, beautiful, and sometimes heartbreaking stories of what it means and what it costs to be a feminist parent. An anthology published by Demeter, the book gathers precious experiences and inspiring thinking from parents in Ecuador, Pakistan, and Côte d’Ivoire, among other countries from the Global Majority. Of various generations, these parents include feminist academics, industrial professionals, policymakers, activists, and students whose first-person narratives attempt to theorize feminist parenting practices.

In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, Christina Sharpe (2016)

In the concept note for Dakar’s 15th Biennale, themed “The Wake, L’éveil, le Sillage” happened from 7 November to 7 December 2024, curator Salimata Diop mentions that the highly anticipated art event is partly inspired by Christina Sharpe’s influential book In the Wake. This groundbreaking and trenchant essay in four acts sees Sharpe take the reader on an investigative journey to unveil the afterlives of slavery. She offers a generous conceptual framework for befriending death while refusing to die and continuing to move forward with life despite the everydayness of Black immanent and imminent death in the Diaspora. It is hard emotional work, physical work, intellectual work, it is “wake work” – an essential method, a site of possibilities, a way to survive in an environment where Black death is the requirement.

Keren Lasme is an artist, writer, and literary curator whose work is concerned with mythopoetic identity formation, knowledge activation, and the use of fiction and imagination as spatiotemporal technologies for inner and outer worldbuilding. Her art practice engages with collective care, engaged pedagogy, and the politics of pleasure while using the collective memories and imagination archived in African literatures as praxis.