Janifer P. Wilson opened Sister’s Uptown Bookstore and Cultural Center at 1942 Amsterdam Avenue in January 2000, and 26 years on she is handing its first awards to five other people.
They go out at the inaugural Voices of Harlem gala on Saturday, Oct. 24, at Riverside Church. The honorees are Herb Boyd, a journalist, educator and author; Dawn Harris-Martine, who owns Grandma’s Place; Wade and Cheryl Hudson, a married couple who have published children’s books for more than 30 years; and Yvonne Stennett, who has led the Community League of the Heights for almost 50 years. Wilson organized the night with her daughter Kori Wilson and with Clarence Reynolds, both of whom work at the store.
“It’s not just a celebration of Sisters, it’s a celebration of us as a people,” Wilson said.
She is also plain about what running it this way costs. “Right now our community is sort of broken,” she said. “If our expenses are now superseding our income, we can’t keep doing donations and events.” What propels her, she said, is “the love of the people that come through here.”
The pressure is not new. In July 2025 the store was five months behind on its rent. “We don’t have enough online traffic or in-store traffic to pay our bills at this point,” she said then, and described herself as holding on for dear life while she worked out what literacy would look like in an era she said nobody had written a script for. Asked about the store’s survival, she answered by moving herself out of the frame. “It’s not about Janifer Wilson, it’s about the community,” she said. “This is a labor of love for me.”
Wilson started the store while working full time as a surgical physician’s assistant, and her daughter now runs it with her. It stocks largely African American authors and the history of the African diaspora, and its motto is “Knowledge of the self is key to our growth.” It is open from noon to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, at 1942 Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan.
“It’s always been in my soul to house, present and preserve the history of the African diaspora,” she said in February 2021. Twenty six years in, the first time she threw a party for the place, she put five other names on the program.
