History

The bookstore, Sister’s Uptown, located at 1942 Amsterdam Ave first opened in January of 2000. The creation of the store was the result of the owner, Janifer Wilson, researching uptown Manhattan and finding that there were no bookstores in Washington Heights. There had been two Bookstores in Harlem and Wilson attributes her motivation to open her bookstore to them. The first was named Liberation Bookstore, it was located on West 133rd street, and it opened in 1966 and closed in 2007 (Liberation Bookstore).  The second, named the Tree of Life, had been located on 125th street. which was founded in 1969 and closed in 1980 (Tree of Life).  Wilson stated that both of these encapsulated phenomenal depictions of black history, and culture.  In addition, Wilson also drew inspiration for her bookstore from her youth. She was raised in Georgia and later moved to New York City when she was 17. She informed us that when she was growing up, she never saw depictions in any of the books of people that looked like her. She said that there were no Black people in U.S. history books, U.S. government, fiction, nonfiction. She just didn’t see the African American community represented anywhere. This caused her to feel invisible and to question her identity. Wilson explained that after she learned about her heritage and rich culture she wanted to emulate that in Washington Heights, the community where she has lived for over thirty years. She specifically wanted to open the bookstore in her community, she didn’t just want it somewhere like lower Manhattan, she wanted it in Washington Heights so that the children of the community could learn about their culture. This was something that she wasn’t able to do when she was a child. She feels that it is difficult for people to go throughout life without knowing who you are and where you came from. She wanted her store to be a place where children and adults can come and embrace the contributions that their ancestors made to the world. She also feels that culture in general is important to embrace.

-Taken from Sister’s Uptown FaceBook Page

“I think we are all one, and once all of us get our purpose …  and what it is we’re doing in this universe, then we will all be able to grow into the loving human beings that we were placed here to be.”

– Janifer Wilson

Before Janifer Wilson owned Sister’s Uptown, she was a health care professional and worked in a hospital for 23 years.  She told us that as at a point in her medical career she no longer felt comfortable working in that profession. She said that medicine became big business, it became too impersonal. The focus became more on prescribing medication, instead of taking the time to help people through their healing. She said that she wanted to actually talk to her patients and listen to them, she wanted to be a healer, but instead the amount of time she was spending with patients was becoming less and less. She no longer felt that she was healing and helping people. With her profession as a bookstore owner she feels that “Now I heal through literacy, and every day I just co-create with the universe.”