A Dark Laboratory Initiative in Support of Independent Bookstores and Diasporic Literary Infrastructures

Books are lungs

Reading is breathing.

Support independent Literary Infrastructures.

  • Dream.

    Reading is breathing. Books are lungs. In order to support literary infrastructure, this initiative seeds efforts of reading together. It is our hope at Dark Lab to supplant and interrogate the harmful internet marketplaces that own the monopoly on book sales. A collective dream of reading together. Collaboratively creating reading lists together, we are knitting the fabric of coalition across hemispheres.

  • Read.

    Reading collectively and critically, we are invested in learning what other decolonial and anti-colonial, Black and Indigenous labs are assigning beyond the classroom. Which books have gone out of print that should still be in circulation? How could grassroots efforts lead to reprinting the books that deserve an ongoing and future audience?

  • Invest.

    Invest in local literary infrastructure. Now more than ever communities are reading together and buying books. Divest from internet marketplaces that parasitically extract from our communities and harm the natural environment. Instead use Bookshop.org, which has raised more than $20,000,000 for local booksellers. Click below to see our Dark Lab book lists in collaboration with other Black and Indigenous labs.

Dark Lab on Bookshop.org

ifi x Dark lab

Our first booklist mashup is with the Indigenous Futures Institute (IFI) (UCSD), a community-driven, interdisciplinary project based in Kumeyaay Territory. In the spirit of the homegrown island method from Jamaica, the sound clash, Tao and Keolu are choosing 10 books together that echo across Pacific and Atlantic ecologies of anti-colonial resistance. In order to divert web traffic from invasive internet marketplaces that deceptively name themselves after rainforests and are killing our natural and literary ecosystems, IFI and Dark Lab are partnered with Bookshop.org to support local booksellers. Reading together as part of Dark Lab’s Books are Lungs initiative, this is a collaboration by Dr. Tao Leigh Goffe and Dr. Keolu Fox.

  1. Julian Aguon, No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies: A Lyric Essay (Astra House)

  2. Gloria Wekker, White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (Duke UP)

  3. Epeli Hau’ofa, We are the Ocean (University of Hawaii Press)

  4. Édouard Glissant, Poetic Intention (Nightboat Books)

  5. Jessica Hernandez, Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science (North Atlantic Books)

  6. Aimee Nezhukumatathil, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments (Milkweed Editions)

  7. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (Zed Books)

  8. Denise Ferreira da Silva, Unpayable Debt (Sternberg Press)

  9. Courtney Sina Meredith, The Adventures of Tupaia, (A&u New Zealand)

  10. Jamaica Kincaid, My Garden (Book) (Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux)

Click the link below to see our Bookshop list where you can read annotations about why we selected these books to read together connecting Pacific and Atlantic anti-colonial traditions.

Nā Mea Hawai'i

We created this Bookshop.org list of text in support of the independent bookshop Nā Mea Hawai'i, translated as "all things Hawaiian," near and dear to Keolu's home island communities. At Dark Lab and IFI, we want to highlight the vital work bookshops like Nā Mea Hawai'i do in being devoted to showcasing the work of local artists and crafters from the Hawaiian Islands, in particular Native Hawaiian artists. Located in Honolulu, they have a large selection of Hawaiian and Pacific Island books with a sister location in O’ahu’s Chinatown.

Ward Location
Na Mea Hawaiʻi
1200 Ala Moana Blvd Suite 270
Honolulu, HI 96814

Downtown Honolulu
Native Books
1164 Nu'uanu Ave
Honolulu, HI 96817