Book Smart
By: Jessica Barber, Chemical and Biomolecular engineering student | Categories: Alumni Achievements
That’s how it all started. Katie Mitchell, PP 15, MS PP 16, sat across from her mother, Katherine, at the kitchen table, and that simple question ignited their idea for Good Books. In the summer of 2019, the two founded a new kind of bookstore, one that’s not tied down by a physical location and that celebrates and promotes Black authors and artists. From housing vintage Toni Morrison novels to Stevie Wonder records, Good Books caters to all genres, topics, and areas of interest.
Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the mother-daughter duo was forced to halt all Good Books’ pop-up events. But that created new opportunities for hosting virtual and outdoor book clubs and continuing to reach the community through their online store, where customers can browse their inventory and request customized book recommendations. While Mitchell and her mother are busy building a successful company from the ground up, their primary focus is on eradicating “book deserts” across the nation.
“Similar to [the concept of] a food desert, a book desert doesn’t have a lot of high-quality literature. I focus on Black book deserts, which are more prominent,” Mitchell explains. “Just because there is high-quality literature somewhere doesn’t mean that there will be enough Black books in that selection.”
To fill this gap, Mitchell plans to create Atlanta’s first “book mobile,” or a mobile bookstore that will bring Black literature to local families, neighborhoods, and libraries. The mobile bookstore is currently being designed, and Mitchell plans to grow a fleet capable of venturing across the nation.
“My fleet would be primarily in cities that have a rich Black literature tradition—think of Atlanta, Brooklyn, Oakland, Houston. For major cities where that history’s already there, we can continue to build upon it,” says Mitchell.
With a future like this, Good Books has rightfully earned major recognition. Only two years after the birth of their company, Mitchell and her mother were featured on NPR’s entrepreneurial podcast How I Built This. The women have also gained more than 17,000 followers on social media, yet they stay true to their beginnings.
Since childhood, Mitchell has had a deep love for Black literature and an appreciation for its importance in her day-to-day life. Her book collection at home often awes visitors, and she’s always eager to share her favorite works. Connecting Black literature to her own experiences, she realized early on that civil rights issues widely believed to be resolved were (and still are) ongoing.
Mitchell would go on to study public policy at Georgia Tech. While Good Books was not her original career vision in college, she finds ways to incorporate her education into plans for the book mobile.
“The people planning cities, and the people choosing which neighborhoods get what, definitely have a say in if there are quality books around, if there’s good food, if there’s sidewalks, if the streets are safe enough for our book mobile to even drive on. It all has public policy implications, and it’s all interconnected,” she states.
Ultimately, Mitchell aspires to eliminate book deserts, starting with her flagship mobile bookstore in Atlanta. She looks forward to continuing to spread Black literature, and she predicts a spike in popularity for book mobiles, similar to how food trucks have taken off in the South.
With the next chapter of her story beginning, Mitchell looks back on her time in college and offers this advice for students and alumni: Follow your passion, even if it wasn’t what you thought you’d originally be doing.
“Even though I didn’t have that much knowledge on how to run a business, we kind of just learned by doing. Do what you want to do, life is short. I think a lot of people have realized that during the pandemic. Just go for it,” she says.
