RALEIGH, N.C. —Naledi Yaziyo has always been drawn to the power of words and how they shape our world.

She spends hours every day researching books. Her collection is available in the Durham cafe and bookstore she co-owns, Rofhiwa Book Cafe.


What You Need To Know

  • February was Black History Month, a time to pay tribute to generations of African Americans who have struggled through adversity and made history

  • While celebrating Black achievement from a historical perspective is important, a Durham bookseller wants to challenge the educational lens that she says too often limits how people think about and experience Black literature

  • Rofhiwa Book Cafe boasts a collection of Black authors from all over the world

"I'm interested in the book as a cultural artifact. In the kind of overall life of a book, how a book is made, how a book is acquired," said Yaziyo.

Yaziyo’s personal story began in South Africa, spending her days in a library where her mother worked. She was raised on books and a love of Black literary traditions from across the world.

Every book in her shop tells a different story from a different perspective but with one thing in common  —  all the authors are Black.​

"We understood there was a real need to make the statement and the declaration that the Black literary cannon is one that is deep, is one that is expansive, is one that traverses the entirety of the world," she said.

When first opening Rofhiwa, Yaziyo says she remembers an email she got from someone in the community.

"I would like to support your store, however, I would like to encourage you to include these following books. And these were books that she named as anti-racist books," Yaziyo said, recalling the email.

While Yaziyo appreciates the Black literature many of us read in school, she says it’s a fraction of what’s out there.

"Even in reading the poetry, even in reading the fiction, even in learning about what people laugh at in different parts of the world, I think that too is a kind of anti-racist work because it humanizes us," she said.

The cafe was initially a project Yaziyo wasn't sure would be successful, but she says they had to try.

"Some of the feedback that was received was that it just wouldn't be possible to sell the books that we were interested in because people don't read Black literature in that particular way," Yaziyo said.

Because to only look at Black literature through one lens, Yaziyo says, limits a world of essential voices.

"I think that devalues the work of Black writers to assume that firstly their work is inaccessible, and secondly their work is not as useful for getting to know Black people, for thinking about the world in meaningful ways," she said.