Warm Water @ Rohi’s Readery
It’s ten in the morning, and I’m getting quizzical looks from the woman who’s playing “Meet Your Neighbor” on the guitar. I am a twenty year old man without child, sitting behind dozens of fussing toddlers and their parents for the morning sing-along at Rohi’s Readery. I’m realizing I’ve misread the flyer, and though the toddlers don’t seem to mind, everyone else is a little conscious of that fact. It’s a pretty good song though, I’m giving it the full grade of two arms to this chair.
I’m told the event I’m looking for is later on in the day. On Juneteenth, Rohi’s Readery stirs within me displaced toddlerhood memories of the children’s section in a bookstore I used to visit before it was split and replaced by a luxury car dealer/gym. Before that, I used to play in the bookstore’s children’s section. There was Thomas the Tank Engine sets, light gently touching a professionally tidied chaos through the window, and it all dissipates from memory the moment I rear my four-year-old head to get a better look. I walk home.
At five in the afternoon, Rohi’s is a new place. There is a silent, albeit bustling crowd of educators, artists, policemen, and students packing the place out the door. This transformation is the beauty of Rohi’s made clear. It’s not just a children’s bookstore, but one which understands the power of community and art’s capacity to draw it out.
Together, we watched the entirety of Stamped From the Beginning, selected for us by local West Palm Beach community leader Brian Knowles, an honored educator in the fields of history and social studies. It’s the kind of movie you wished you saw in school, for it does not shy away from history, nor does it accuse anyone in the present as guilty for being its product; there’s only an urging in viewers to change from ignorance to understanding. After the movie, the adults in the room try to get the students to speak about their experiences, and it is slow-going at first. The students are intimidated, perhaps feeling tricked into a lecture. But Knowles is a fantastic orator whose crowd matches his ability to articulate exceptionally well, and a wonderful thing happens.
A teacher asks the young people in the room if they’ve ever been goaded by a teacher into anger, taking the opportunity to rack infraction after infraction upon them. One hesitates, but raises his hand; the other kids are watching the floor. The teacher speaks, “You don’t need adults to validate your brilliance. It’s hard. I’m frustrated. We’re trying to defend y’all, to tell people how kind, how beautiful, how smart y’all are. We need to make you guys understand that no one is coming to save us. You all are 15, 16, 17, what do you think happens when you’re 20, 21, 25, 30?” A sort of barrier crumbles then. It’s not an adult-child conversation anymore. It’s a conversation about what's at stake in the fight with the powers that be for equality and freedom.
Another teacher adds on. “The police think we’re a gang, the gangs think we’re the police. We’re just fighting. Our anger is from empathy. We’re frustrated because yall are unrecognized. The kids must do what we see them do to survive in school: get together and form something for themselves.” Brian Knowles agrees, nodding his head. “Rohi’s Readery is an example of developing community. Giving up their space so that we can have the important conversations. A fight in this corner, a fight in that corner, and the fire will catch.” The policeman speaks of his dissonance between his sense of duty and the profiling he regularly has to check within his department. A college student vents about how tired she is of having her intelligence questioned for the way she sounds. And finally, a young student raises his hand, takes the stage, searches for his words, and begins to speak.
To those in need of a children’s bookstore focused on building people up, or wish for an invigorating way to spend their afternoon in the West Palm Beach area, I’d highly recommend visiting Rohi’s Readery. It’s an outstandingly warm place, aiming to empower kids through education, in turn bolstering the community. The selection of books is diverse. I read The Memory Balloons while waiting for the event, and it gave me goosebumps. The owner of Rohi’s, Pranoo, is a joy to meet, and believes in art’s ability to draw scrutiny to aspects of society in need of improvement so that our union means the best for all. “When it comes to art, every piece of art, at least in my experience, has told a story, has told a belief, an opinion, an idea, a fact. A lot of times, even just looking at the art, you can’t feel apolitical. There’s nothing apolitical about the experiences by which someone is born out of for others to see. It’s not just political for politics, but for belief systems.” We should seek to critique the world. We should not ask some to settle for less so others are allowed more.
Stamped at Birth situates the importance of art as a tool for enslaved Africans in America to have their humanity be unignorable. Poetry, novels, art; I expect in our digital age the vectors for change will, well, change. There is power in meetings like these, where present reviews past. You can feel the churning of wheels just below the surface of countless entranced skulls, fixed at the speakers or bowed in contemplation, watching the ability of words to electrify air.
For those interested, Rohi’s Readery can be found in City Place (Death to Rosemary Square, it’ll always be City Place), 700 South Rosemary Avenue, Suite 130, however Pranoo did tell me they were moving to a new location nearby. On Instagram, they are @rohisreadery. Whether you’re five, fifteen, or fifty, there’s always something there to involve yourself with and come away from rejuvenated.
Written by Aiden Little
Edited by Sarah Lerner
Overseen by Hope Fell
Graphics By Suzanne Allen
