Reading the OPC

What should be in the South Side canon?

After I wrote the other day about the excitement of finding my 2019 book, The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook, for sale at the Obama Presidential Center gift shop, I’ve been thinking about how books help define and support the mission of museum gift shops and other non-bookstore outlets like this. Because the primary purpose of the OPC gift shop is not to offer a well-rounded selection of books on Chicago, or the South Side of Chicago, or presidents. It’s to allow visitors to take home a little piece of the thing that drew them there in the first place: the Obamas.

Accordingly, most of the shop is given over to OPC-branded T-shirts, coffee mugs, caps, keychains, hoodies, water bottles, tank tops, magnets — you get the gist. There are also plenty of items for kids that support the OPC’s aim to inspire the next generation: board books, stickers, STEAM kits teaching engineering and chemistry. These also support the goal of keeping kids from whining that they’re bored.

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of books in the shop are by or about the Obamas or those in their orbit: their memoirs, their fashion, their messages of uplift. Some secondary characters are represented as well. Former White House chef Sam Kass’s cookbook is there, as is OPC director Valerie Jarrett’s memoir. This all makes good sense.

Out on the perimeter one finds the remaining books, a small, eclectic selection of titles on democracy, Black history, and Chicago. Ta-Nahesi Coates is there, and Isabel Wilkerson. There’s a smattering of fiction — a few Toni Morrison titles, and Erik Larsen’s Devil in the White City, set as it is during the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in the surrounding neighborhood. And there’s my book, which, again, is just so neat. But that’s about it.

From a publishing perspective, I’d love to see sales figures. How many folks visiting the OPC actually wind up walking out the door with a copy of Song of Solomon? I’m so curious — and, obviously, not without some self-interest, lol.

My gut tells me, though, that most books in spaces like these are window dressing. They allow the shop to nod to engagement with the larger conversation in which the museum operates with little risk. Gift shops often purchase from industry-specific wholesalers who bundle books along with puzzles, candles, and tchotchkes — like this one, which wholesales several Belt titles including mine. It’s not wrong! Still, though, the book person in me feels a missed opportunity.

If I was stocking the shelves in the OPC gift shop with an eye toward offering visitors an education in Chicago culture, history, and the modern South Side beyond the parts touched by Barack and Michelle, here are a dozen titles I’d include. This list is not comprehensive, and skews with intent to small and university press titles published since Obama first took office. (And these aren’t affiliate links or anything; just for your convenience.)

A Modern South Side Canon

The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation, Natalie Moore (Macmillan)
Don’t Go: Stories of Segregation and How to Disrupt It, Tonika Lewis Johnson and Maria Krysan (Polity Press)
Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side, Lee Bey (Northwestern University Press)
High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing, ed. Audrey Petty (Haymarket Books)
Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side, Eve Ewing (University of Chicago Press)
An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago, Alex Kotlowitz (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
The Wall of Respect: Public Art and Black Liberation in 1960s Chicago, Abdul Alkalimat, Rebecca Zorach, and Romi Crawford (Northwestern)
The Torture Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago, Flint Taylor (Haymarket)
Made in Chicago: Stories Behind 30 Great Chicago Eats, Monica Eng and David Hammond (University of Illinois Press) (I edited this; conflicts of interest are the Chicago Way!)
Energy Never Dies: Afro-Optimism and Creativity in Chicago, Ayana Contreras (Illinois)
Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood, Dawn Turner Trice (Simon & Schuster)
Sacred Ground: The Chicago Streets of Timuel Black, Timuel Black as told to Susan Klonsky (Northwestern)
Move on Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power, Aaron Cohen (Chicago)

Chicagoans: What am I missing? What would you stock in your South Side gift shop?