About the Black Unicorn Library and Archive Project

The Black Unicorn Library and Archive Project was founded in 2014 and has been unfolding ever since. The library has existed in many forms from pop-ups in storefronts, installations at universities and art galleries to tables at farmers markets, and the PGH International airport. We also operated a brick-and-mortar Reading Room from 2017-2019 in the hilltop neighborhood of Allentown. We continue to share a love of reading with our community through virtual programming and special events throughout the year and most recently held hosting satellite locations in 2022 at at BOOM Concepts and Alternate Histories Studios.

Mission

Our mission is to cultivate libraries as sites of learning, possibility, and freedom and to celebrate the literary and artistic contributions of Black women, queer, Trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people across the Diaspora. Black Unicorn explores the relationship between literacy and liberation and brings a unique experience and lens to material collection, information sharing, and community building. The Black Unicorn is a cultural intervention, addressing the limited and distorted representations of Black literature available in our education and cultural spaces. We address cultural violence and erasure by nurturing a love of reading, uplifting our historical legacy and narratives that have been relegated to the margins by sharing them with our community through creative resistance. Our programs and collaborations allow us to not only challenge the systems that oppress us but to practice imagining, dreaming, and building new worlds and ways of being in this world.