he Soulful Chicago Book Fair showcases Black authors in every genre, while providing entertainment and information to Chicago’s Black Community. It is ironic that someone who hails from New York, known to some as the literary city, would create and build such a successful book fair in Chicago. However, no matter how so Chicago Assadah Kirkland is, she still credits her spirit of entrepreneurship and her “can-do” attitude to her up bringing in New York.
“New York is a unique experience because of the pace, because of its diversity of cultures, because of the autonomy of its people,” she explains.
Music was a profound influence on Asadah when she and her brother grew up in New York. “Nobody we knew listened to the kind of music we were raised on,” she said, “It was a lot of blue-eyed soul like Stephen Bishop, the Dooby Brothers, Bob James and others.”
Through a variety of people, she was exposed to various kinds of life experiences. And all-in-all, she describes her growing up in New York as a “very fun, loving experience of tame plays and traveling,” She also states her New York upbringing included meeting some top stars. “My mother worked at Madison Square Garden,” she tells us, “So we were backstage all the time. We were backstage with Luther Van Dross and with the Jacksons.” It was because of those backstage events and because, according to Asadah, “There’s so much in New York in terms of just celebrity life and big living,” consequently, celebrities never phased her.
Everybody who knows Asadah knows she is a dancer. She loves dancing to House Music (she calls i “House Dancing”), having been brought to her first dance club by her mother.
Changing The Way Black Chicago Reads
Asadah was an “A” student in Catholic school, from kindergarten to 12th grade. As she talks of her experiences, her music, and her studies, it dawns on her that perhaps it was the leadership organizations she belonged to that led to her becoming who she is and what she has done so far in life.
When she was in fourth grade, a teacher predicted that Asadah was going to be “amazing.” Asadah’s mother believed that, andnever let go of it, and she continues to bring it up to this day. Asadah, herself, believes she came into this world to be great. “It has nothing to do with ego,” she explains, “It has everything to do with knowingness.” To clarify, she tells of when her mother birthed her without pain. “She didn’t even know she was in labor,” says Asadah, “The doctor was saying ‘ma’am, you re X amount of centimeters; you’re about to have a baby.” Her mother did not feel one labor pain and was ready to go home to watch her soap operas. But Baby Asadah came, without stress, without pain. She came with an incredibly unique, “I’m coming through, but it’s effortless; it’s not a struggle.” As a high school senior in Brooklyn, Asadah became involved in the Archbishop Leadership Project. As high school juniors and seniors, the students in that organization were trained to publicly speak, They were taught traditional African history and culture as well. “We had to look at ‘how are you going to service your community once you get out of school?’” she says. “And we had to learn what type of leaders we were.” She tells us that they had activities in which students would engage to see what type of leaders they were, and she says, “These activities made me comfortable in my African heritage. They made me knowledgeable about Marcus Garvey versus W. E. B. DuBois. It made me decide as to whether I was on the talented tenth side or on the Garvey side. Ultimately, I determined that I’m a Garvey girl. I believe in entrepreneurship, and in getting people to emancipate themselves.”
After high school, Asadah came to Chicago’s Evanston community as a student at Northwestern University. She came with an aptitude for reading that the Archbishop Leadership Project had instilled in her by having to read books all summer long like “The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Why We Can’t Wait, by Dr. Marin Luther King, Jr., and They Came Before Columbus, by Ivan Van Sertima.
“So maybe,” she concluded, “Maybe my entryway into the literary world came from that leadership training organization, where we always had to read.”
Another school which taught Asadah to love to read, even before Northwestern, was an all-girl’s school in downtown New York called Notre Dame. The girls fought to be able to read their own books and to be tested on those books. They wanted to read about their history and their heroes. “They ended up testing us on those books, and that was a literary victory,” she said. “And so, being able to do that might have further started my world, my literary world, because I don’t remember growing up thinking I want to be a writer,” she says. She believes she was commissioned by the Creator to do the things she is doing in her literary world.
After graduation from Northwestern, she got an apartment on the South Side of Chicago and became a teacher. She taught video production, and in creating unorthodox methods for teaching, she took about eighteen children on a field trip to Senegal, West Africa. “I did that so those young people could have a story – an international story – not just stories of their block,” she says, and adds, “That was the end of my teaching career.”
In 1993, Asadah managed a Black bookstore in downtown Chicago called Afrocentric Bookstore. People would come and ask her opinion about what books they should read, The store expressed all of the historical and present culture. They had authors come into the bookstore for special presentations and book signings.
In 2007, Asadah moved back to New York with plans to open a literary café called “Read My Mind” Literary Café. However, the $77 per square foot cost to purchase the 1,000 square foot café she wanted to move into caused her to change her mind.
In 2009, Asadah had a stroke. Even the stroke was a positive opposed to negative, and propelled her closer to her ultimate fate. She was sent home three months after having the stroke, in the case of a friend. “One day my five-year-old daughter tore up some money,” said Asadah. And the friend who was caring for them suggested that Asadah spank the child. “Spanking my daughter was preposterous to me,” said Asadah. At that point, she saw that progressive, namaste-speaking, headwrap-wearing, green oatmeal-eating people, still believed in hitting children. Little Black children at that
The girls fought to be able to read their own books and to be tested on those books. They wanted to read about their history and their heroes. “They ended up testing us on those books, and that was a literary victory,” she said. “And so, being able to do that might have further started my world, my literary world, because I don’t remember growing up thinking I want to be a writer,” she says. She believes she was commissioned by the Creator to do the things she is doing in her literary world.
She decided to write a book. Beating Black Kids came out in 2009 in New York at the Harlem Book Fair. Asadah says, “I never stopped selling since that time.” Asadah has appeared on ABC and CNN and Al Jazeera as well as Al Jazeera English which airs abroad. She became a major player in the anti-corporal punishment world to the point where she has been hired to speak at events and workshops throughout the country, speaking to doctors and colleges. And her book is on the curricula of several Black schools.
That brings us to 2014 when, as an author, Asadah decided to create a Book Fair in Chicago. The first “Soulful Chicago Book Fair” took place in 2016, the first of its kind, taking over four city blocks, each representing a genre, such as, fiction, non-fiction, children, and Black history. Grammy level artists performed. Authors and playwrights conducted workshops.
She continued to have annual Book Fairs with the exception of a brief interruption during the Pandemic. Now known as a literary figure, she was asked by the Chicago Public Library in 2017 to recreate the Book Fair inside of the Harold Washington Library. She was given close to 4,000 square feet of space. There are large collages of the Book Fair hanging from the ceiling, and the library encased the Book Fair’s books in glass, like a museum. On the weekends, Asadah and some of her authors conducted workshops. So far, there have been twelve Book Fairs: four main ones with the fifth one coming up, and other book fairs with specific genres, such as, children’s book fairs, and more.
The Book Fair has traditionally been held on 61st Street between Cottage Grove Avenue and King Drive. However, this year, she is in partnership with Woodlawn Central, which is an arm of the Apostolic Church on 63rd and Dorchester. They have been given a billion dollars to build somewhat of a city with high rise buildings, theaters, restaurants, and Black businesses. In 2022, Asadah opened a Metaverse Book Fair. Putting the Book Fair in the metaverse meant people were coming into a computer world as little avatars, walking around and selling their books. It was an amazing technological extravaganza. And Dr. Byron Brazier, pastor of the Apostolic Church of God, has a son who is running Woodlawn Central. He was so impressed with the Metaverse Book Fair that he asked Asadah to have her Book Fair this year at 63rd and Dorchester.
So, this year’s Soulful Chicago Book Fair will be held at 63rd and Dorchester on August 5, 2023. There will be performances by entertainers, including Freddie Dixon and his blues band, and other local artists.
This year, they will be flying in one of the authors who was present at the Metaverse Book Fair who lives in Japan. He will be doing a presentation called, “Two Countries, One Soul.” He has authored a trilogy, and a fourth book entitled Twenty-First Century Japan Decoded. There will also be a group of performers called “Music Magic Time” who will perform for the little children.
Asadah predicts that this year’s Soulful Chicago Book Fair will be the best ever. A question she is hearing a lot lately is: “Are you still accepting authors?” And her answer is, “Yes. Absolutely. Just go to the website www.soulfulchicago.com and go to ‘author’s admissions.’”
Donna Beasley – Asadah Kirkland’s Partner in Crypto
Donna Beasley met Asadah Kirkland at a South Side Café, Greenline Coffee, at 501 East 61st Street. Asadah told Donna about her dream of having a Book Fair in Chicago.
“We vibed immediately,” said Donna, a publisher, author, and creator, president and publisher of KaZoom Kids Books. Donna speaks of how excited she was that someone was taking up the mantel.
Donna has been a sponsor in each one of Asadah’s book fairs, and co-authored “Bitcoin for Black People,” with Asadah – a book that explains Crypto Currency to African Americans. Donna has recently authored a book titled “Spark Magic: How to write a multicultural children’s
picture book.”
