• Jumel Terrace Books

    Revolutionary & Colonial Washington Heights, Harlem, Africa, West Indies, Art, Myth, History & Literature: Slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Theology, Military, Labor, Civil Rights, Negritude, Black Power.

"An Oasis for the Unrestrained Pursuit of Knowledge"
*************And a "Nugget" in the Rubbish*************

Uptown's only bookshop specializing in local history, African & American. The shop on 160th Street, open by appointment or serendipity, faces the Morris-Jumel Mansion, the headquarters of George Washington during 1776’s Battle of Harlem Heights, & our stock addresses its significance in 18th & 20th century Revolutionary American history.

As Sugar Hill, the neighborhood has retained its reputation as the intellectual & artistic home of Black America. Jumel Terrace Books follows in the tradition of bookstores serving the community since George Young’s Book Exchange opened in 1920. Before Black Studies entered college curriculums in 1968, shops like Lewis Micheaux’s House of Common Sense & Home of Proper Propaganda & Richard B Moore’s Frederick Douglass Book Center were important sources of education, aspiration & inspiration. As did our predecessors, we buy & sell very good books on our subjects.

Jumel Terrace Books - Blog

Pimpnology

Pimpnology: Regarding Players, Hoes, Johns & The Life Capitalism 101:  Urban anthropologists Christina and Richard Milner’s keen street ecology, Black Players: The Secret World of Black Pimps (Little, Brown and Co., 1972), laid out the game as played by what, in the early 70s, was commonly referred to as the System.  In the System, “Each […]

On the Origin & Importance of Small & Fugitive Pieces

The Black World Today Harlem, New York I’ve recently read, with great interest, that the African American Literature section of the Borders Books store at the Stonecrest mall in Lithonia, Ga, is suffering a pestilence of “pornography for black women.” The earnest author, most recently of A Love Story, Nick Chiles reports to the New […]

Chinua Achebe

KURT THOMETZ NEW YORK CITY Things Falling Together On Saturday, May 4, the great Nigerian author Chinua Achebe (Things Fall Apart, A Man of the People, Anthills of the Savannah) spoke at NYU’s Vanderbilt Hall. It was an elegant venue for the man who is arguably the greatest literary stylist of the second half of […]