UBC student spearheads effort to create Black library in Vancouver
Global News
Maya Preshyon said she was inspired to create the facility after realizing Vancouver lacked cultural spaces for the Black community that other big cities have.
A Vancouver UBC student is spearheading an initiative to create a Black library she hopes will become a community hub.
Maya Preshyon said she was inspired to create the facility after realizing Vancouver lacked cultural spaces for the Black community that other big cities have.
“We saw the deficit of infrastructure for the Black community and we’re trying to come up with a solution,” Preshyon told Global News.
“As a space it’s of course a library, but also a community gathering place. It’s going to be a place people can come to study, that people can chill, that people can come and just do work without having to pay for a coffee every hour.”
Preyshon said she also envisions the library filling a community role, where people can host workshops or group therapy sessions.
Ideally, the library will be situated near the former site of Hogan’s Alley, Vancouver’s historically Black neighbourhood that was razed in the 1970s to make way for the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts.
“Hogan’s Alley was just a place for people of the Black community and the Black diaspora to come together and have their cultural centre,” Preyshon said, adding that the history of the area has received little recognition until recently.
“I am a Black person in Vancouver, and I was never taught about what happened with Hogan’s Alley. I didn’t know that Vancouver had a Black neighbourhood; I didn’t know that Jimi Hendrix was here.”