I wouldn't say I started with an underlying theme in mind. I started with my gut and thought about titles that I regularly return to, things on my own bookshelf, ones that were really rare and hard to find. And I thought if we could find them for this library, it would be so wonderful to give larger access to a big group. I started thinking about different types of audiences who would frequent a library, and I thought of myself when I used to go to libraries when I was younger, and then thought about who can benefit from access to great titles; so not really a theme, but really a collection of my ideas.

Last year, I was just introduced to Wanda Coleman by Cauleen Smith, an artist I'm currently working on a project with, and I’ve been doing a deep dive into Wanda's complete literary catalog ever since. These are two examples that I couldn't pick one over the other, you're right. And Native in a Strange Land is more of a collection of short stories – which, short stories are my absolute favorite form of the written word. I could have done a whole list of a collection of short stories. I think Octavia Butler, Bloodchild is my favorite short story collection, which is on this list too.

But Mad Dog, Black Lady is more traditional poetry. Wanda was just such a prolific writer and not recognized as much as many fans believe she should have been, and was later talked about as this Black poet laureate. Really, really talented and could pen a story or a poem, a sonnet, really. So I put two selections there that I felt, or hoped, would give somebody who was just reading her for the first time a good breadth of her talent.

Well, that is a deep question. I noticed that there was already an Octavia Butler in the [Saint Heron Library] collection, so I picked a different title, but I couldn't stay away from selecting something. And I think that Octavia – I don't know if it would be just necessarily my practice in particular, but – for Black people, her genre of sci-fi was really a refreshing lens in how to help us explain us, to others; and to make others aware that it's not only skin color. If you remove skin color and talk about Bloodchild, for example, which is the title [story] of that collection of short stories, [it] resonated with me so much how you end up projecting identity onto something when it is not prescribed or set out for you. So you're describing aliens with a family that is seemingly human, some kind of human from some particular time… but it's the way that they are commingling that is familiar. It is the political and social structures that we're familiar with. I think she provided a way to think about human nature, and that so much of how we are told to identify and categorize people is projected onto us. Because when you remove it, you see the true structure of things. You see the true structure of society. And I think that maybe, I should know, I'm sure somebody, some experts know this, but sci-fi just feels like a genre where you are given that freedom to make believe. What if we don't call this woman Black and we refer to her as this, but she has all of the tropes of a Black woman? And then we can play with the story a little differently so somebody's not approaching it as a Black woman first - creating a kind of alternate universe or alternate reality for Black people. [Octavia Butler] She's  so smart. Bloodchild is such a great story for me.

I actually curated an exhibition based on this short story with Juliana Huxtable and Carolyn Lazard in 2018. And I wanted to just call it Bloodchild, but my artist friends were smarter. It was called ‘Epigenetic.’ But it was really a wonderful experience. We kind of formed a Bloodchild book club. I sent them the story, we read it, [and] we worked on it for a year. We really thought about what the story meant, what it meant for our work as a curator and as artists, and it was a really rewarding experience. That's how sci-fi, for me, just kind of creates more freedom in an interpretation. You read it with the lens that you want. And it's interesting to think about how people can read it differently.

I feel like I carved it out with Octavia. But William Pope.L's Friendliest Black Artist in America is probably the first artist book that I truly read every essay in and didn't just have it as a coffee table book. It's such a great artist book. One book title on this list that is really important to me is the Clarion Issue One. Clarion is my imprint and I put this issue on the list because it's the first issue. Books have always been very important to me and I love the idea of archiving everything in print. I even make a zine of every show that we do; and everything is printed, bound, photocopied and circulated so [that] every show gets a book, which is not the norm in a gallery. It's very rare that you have the support and the budget to make a book for a show. So I was able to work out a system where instead of a monograph or colorful design, I'm modeling them off of encyclopedias and they look like a collectible issue, and a collectible series. I love making them. I'm the editor, so I approach writers for commission texts; and it feels like I revisit them all the time. I'm always flipping through my own books, so it's a little bit of a selfish pick, but I do feel really privileged and honored to finally be able to make something that I can share with people.

That's a hard question to answer. I can just say what stands out in this moment, which is really to not be too calculated in my answer. But the No Pain Like This Body by Harold Sonny Ladoo. I was introduced to this title recently in a studio visit I was doing with filmmaker Richard Fung. I'm born in Toronto, but my family's Trinidadian, and Richard is Trinidadian and living in Toronto. He mentioned this film he was working on about Harold Sonny Ladoo. And the story behind the author himself is what was so intriguing, and the fact that this book was originally published in the early seventies, and it was essentially a novel about queerness at a time when that wasn't really written about, especially by a first time author who was in his twenties, new immigrant. All of these things started pouring about Harold Sonny Ladoo. And then there's some controversy around his death, which is still unfolding. So it's a well-written book, and it's an interesting story of the author, of how he kind of came up and it's like an unsolved mystery, still.

Looking at this list and just talking about my visit with Richard Fung and that Harold Sonny Ladoo book, all of these books have been recommended to me or given to me, except for Octavia Butler, maybe. Really, most of these books have been through conversation with me and artists, or are by artists that I've worked with as a result. And these books, it's interesting, it actually is a reflection of what I've been working on and who I've been working with over the past maybe seven or eight years.