DEBORAH WILLIS GIVES BOOKS BY BLACK PHOTOGRAPHERS

“in 1996, I was in California giving a talk on one of my books on Black photographers. I received a copy of Paula L. Woods’s book Merry Christmas, Baby (like new from $20). It’s a Christmas and Kwanzaa book by her and her husband, Felix H. Liddell. It includes paintings and some writings by Martin Luther King Jr. and W.E.B. Du Bois, and I got so excited about it I decided to buy the book and give copies away to friends and family. I went to a bookstore called Eso Won; it’s an old Black bookstore in Los Angeles that’s actually closing at the end of this year. I just thought, I want everyone to have a copy of this. After that, I decided to continue to give books every year—books about Black art, art history, and contemporary art. More specifically, I began to buy 20 copies of the same book. In 1999, I gave

To Conserve a Legacy, by Richard Powell and Jock Reynolds; another year, Pamela Newkirk’s A Love No Less, a compilation of African American love letters. I’ve given Carrie Mae Weems’s Three Decades of Photography and Video. I’ve given Mickalene Thomas’s photography book, Muse.”