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Joanna Banks in her library, 2018 (photograph by John Pollack) -
Banks seated in front of her collection, ca. 1990s (photograph by Harold Darwin, Anacostia Community Museum)
The Joanna Banks Collection of African American literature includes over 10,000 published works, primarily from the 1970s to the present. Particular strengths include women's writing, children's literature, cookery, and African American periodicals. The Banks Collection was donated to the Penn Libraries in 2018.
A major exhibition of materials from the Banks Collection and accompanying symposium, in the Spring semester of 2020, is entitled "Writing Across Genres."
A video interview with Joanna Banks, conducted by Penn Professor of Africana Studies Barbara Savage, is available for viewing.
Collection description and information for researchers
The Joanna Banks Collection may be understood as a collection of collections. In its totality, it represents a broad selection of African American book production, covering many subjects, published primarily from the mid-1960s to the present day. A small group of archival materials, including scrapbooks and photograph albums Banks assembled to document the many literature readings she attended, are also part of the collection.
Particular strengths in the Banks Collection include these genres:
- Works by and about Black women (over 3,000 volumes), including fiction, poetry, biographies and autobiographies in genres from history to social science to art.
- Children’s literature (approximately 1,000 volumes), especially picture books highlighting Black children.
- African-American cookbooks (over 400 volumes).
- African American periodicals.
Cataloging of the Banks Collection is ongoing, and records for books are added to the online catalog regularly.
- Browse the Banks Collection of African American literature in the online catalog (Franklin), in order by author, A-Z. This collection heading is assigned to all titles in the Banks Collection.
- Browse the Banks Collection of African American Children's Books in the online catalog, by author, A-Z.
- Browse the Banks Collection of African American Cookbooks in the online catalog, by author, A-Z.
- Browse periodicals in the Banks Collection, by title, A-Z.
About the collector
Banks began her collection in 1965 with the Book-of-the Month Club book The Langston Hughes Reader. Reading Hughes built a desire in Banks to find the work of Black writers, and it was the thrill of making new discoveries in used and new bookstores that fueled her decades-long collecting journey.
In the 1980s, Banks also began documenting African-American literary culture in Washington, D.C., filling albums with her photographs of authors like Alice Walker and James Baldwin at readings, book signings, and conferences.