With a vintage tile facade and large glass display windows lined neatly with books, Making Worlds Cooperative Bookstore and Social Center’s storefront is ideal. However, this charming spot was not intended for retail; cofounder Malav Kanuga first identified the space as a storage facility for his independent publishing house, Common Notions.
“The original plan was to have storage in the back, and use the space in the front for public programming, film screenings and political education,” Kanuga remembers. “But it quickly got more ambitious — because we were already involved in social justice-oriented publishing, we decided to also use this space to feature other publishers we align with and respect.”
The location also felt like an organic fit. There wasn’t another bookstore in the immediate vicinity, and West Philly’s culture of activism made it feel like home.
“We wanted to learn from these histories, amplify them and give space for communities to come together and do some deep thinking about the problems on the city, national and international levels,” Kanuga says.
Making Worlds opened on Valentine’s Day in 2020, and barely made it a month before businesses shut down because of the pandemic. The store began cautiously reopening a few months later, and received an outpouring of interest and support from the community.
“During the uprisings in Philadelphia that summer, we were flooded with requests to volunteer, and with ideas for teach-ins, read-ins and writer groups,” Kanuga says.
We wanted to learn from these histories, amplify them and give space for communities to come together and do some deep thinking about the problems on the city, national and international levels.”
— Malav Kanuga, Making Worlds cofounder
Since then, the shop has grown both its book selection and the scope of its programming. In any given week, you might find a writer’s group, a book launch by a local Black graphic novelist and a Gaza medical mutual aid fundraiser and documentary screening.
Kanuga notes that, especially over the last two years, Making Worlds has hosted a lot of programming around Gaza and Palestine.
“The shop has also served as a space of grieving, where people are processing extremely complicated emotions around this unfolding and unmitigated catastrophe and genocide,” he says. “That programming has been deeply important for many of us who’ve been trying to make sense of this and can’t do so with any dependency on mainstream reporting.”
The store’s shelves are laden with current indie fiction, as well as books organized into numerous political categories, like Black, migrant and indigenous poetry, Asian American experiences, abolition, movement building, genderqueer and trans activism and many more.
“The categories are invitations and portals into those topics that open into much larger rooms of imagination than we often have access to.”
Making Worlds is a co-op, currently with four cooperative members, all of whom also hold full-time jobs elsewhere. Kanuga notes that while it took a little while to iron out the co-op model because of the rocky start due to the pandemic, a cooperative workplace was always the plan.
“For us, cooperatives, mutualism and reciprocity define what solidarity is, and those principles belong in the workplace. Our idea was to become a cooperative workplace and a cooperative place of learning and community engagement, a place where people’s ideas can come alive.”
Where is the bookstore?
210 South 45th Street near Saad’s.