Gabriella Kinté

I'd like to introduce myself. I'm known as Gabriella Kinté. Kinté is a pseudonym I adopted a few years ago when I learned the hard way that being an anti-racist militant can have consequences for  your privacy.

I started getting involved in Montreal-North at the right time. I needed a way to channel the accumulated frustrations due to the inequities of a system that deals with women, people of color and people of low financial standings with very little regard. What is it like living with three reasons to be discriminated? In my case, it was to be resentful, to think that it was my fault if I was  poor and had difficulties. That I deserved the mistreatment I received when caught for an infraction as minor as jaywalking.

My letting go of self-guilt started with looking into how our society is structured. Reading became my weapon. I then understood that certain circumstances in which I lived were organized. Nothing is there by chance. I've learned some interesting words like «privilege» and «capitalism».

I adopted those two words as if they had been the first I had ever learned and applied them to everything. Being an activist, most of my job was mobilization for immediate causes. This led me to realize that organization allows you to mobilize towards long term goals.

I was reminded of a speech by Kwamé Touré, in which he said there is a difference between mobilization and organization. It struck me like a lightning bolt: In order to organize, we need spaces. I finally allowed myself to dream about the space I would have liked to have as a teenager.

This place would be a bookstore, but not like other bookstores. A place where I can see myself on the bookshelves. A place where a Nasir Jones or Sean Carter gets the same reverence as a William Shakespeare or a Molière would. Why?

Because the younger me used to conceive of culture and reading as something belonging to a white elite. Something that did not look like me. Besides, my first cultural contacts were imposed in a school system not adapted to my needs.

From what we were reading in class to the theatre, no artists/ authors resembled me. Am I not allowed to dream? Is it not a fundamental right to have aspiration? Is it not human nature to seek points of references you can identify with?

Let's play a little game. Quickly name three queens. Name three philosophers. Name three top athletes.

If all your references are Caucasian, aside from the category of the world of sports, I'll be waiting for you as of August 5 in Montreal-North.

«Allow me to re-introduce myself.»

My name is Gabriella Kinté, owner of Racines Bookstore.