Okay, so this one I am absolutely going to geek out on because of all the things we did on Martha’s Vineyard, there was exactly one event I prepaid for: the Martha’s Vineyard Black Book Festival. Obviously. Put me on an island with beautiful Black people, books, intelligent conversation and hors d’oeuvres and there is very little convincing required. Honestly, add a cash bar and I am not sure how the afternoon could have been improved. The festival, founded by Traci Wilkes Smith, is only in its third year and brings Black authors, journalists, thinkers and readers together in Oak Bluffs for conversations around books, culture, history and community. I had studied the schedule before we arrived and already had very strong opinions about which panels I absolutely could not miss, so naturally I was late.
I wasn’t late because I was leisurely sipping coffee on a porch or doing something appropriately Vineyard-ish. I burned my hand making bacon, second degree burn and my husband was concerned. I stood over the sink running my finders under water for what felt like half the morning before deciding that I had already paid for these tickets and unless the finger actually fell off, I was going to the book festival not the ER. So my friend Ally and I arrived late, missed some of the swag bags and freebies, and I learned an important vacation lesson about the dangers of cooking your own breakfast.
The moment I walked in, though, I forgot about all of it. Everywhere I looked there were beautiful Black people, especially Black women, carrying books around like they were the newest Bottega bag, and frankly, I loved that for us. Books were tucked under arms, stacked on tables, being signed and discussed. Women were dressed beautifully. People were hugging people they knew. Bunch of Grapes had set up the bookstore, conversations were happening in two different spaces, and scattered throughout all of it were maybe a dozen women dressed completely in white. They were smiling, greeting people, answering questions and directing everyone where they needed to go. I noticed them, registered somewhere in my brain that they seemed to know absolutely everything, and kept moving. I had authors to hear and a finger to nurse through the afternoon.
Once Ally and I sat down, I entered what I can only describe as my personal alternate universe. These people were speaking my language, and I don’t just mean because they were talking about books. They were talking about Black history and wealth, the stories we inherit, the things we build, the world we are living in and the one we hope our children inherit. Someone onstage would say something and I would nod, only to look around and realize everybody else was nodding too. There is something incredibly luxurious about being in a room where you don’t have to explain the footnotes. Nobody needs the five-minute preamble before you get to the actual point. You can begin the conversation several chapters in because everyone else has been reading too.
And the authors were incredible. Walter Mosley, Imani Perry, Kimberlé Crenshaw, A’Lelia Bundles, Courtney B. Vance, Dorothy A. Brown and so many others filled the program. I met Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, had Morgan Radford sign Now Then, and walked away from meeting Kennedy Ryan convinced I now needed to read everything she has ever written because she somehow gave every person standing in her line her complete attention and a huge hug. Amy DuBois Barnett and I had the particularly ridiculous realization that two women who both live in Southern California apparently needed to travel 3,000 miles to Martha’s Vineyard to meet. We talked about books, California and hopefully bringing her down for a Held & Rooted Book Club conversation. There is photographic evidence of our conversation, and judging by Amy’s expression, I was making an extremely important point. Again, no one who knows me will be surprised by this.
There were so many more books I wanted signed that I briefly considered whether clothing was truly necessary for the flight home or whether my entire carry-on could become a mobile library. My husband would have had opinions, so I exercised extraordinary restraint and returned to the panels. But by then I had started watching the room differently, and there were those women in white again. One was helping someone find something, another was introducing the next panel discussion, another seemed to know exactly where someone needed to be. They had been quietly moving around the festival all afternoon, and suddenly something occurred to me: this event is only three years old.
That didn’t make sense to me. Three years is still the stage where you’re supposed to be texting your friends the night before asking if anybody has an extra extension cord. Maybe they were doing that too, but this felt established. There were authors, moderators, vendors, food, photographers, volunteers, book sales and two programming spaces running simultaneously. Nationally recognizable people were sitting onstage having substantive conversations with an audience that had traveled specifically to hear them. My lovely afternoon at a book festival was now in serious danger because my brain had switched from this is wonderful to how exactly did she build this?
Unfortunately, once that switch happens there is no coming back for me. This is what happens when you give an MBA to a woman who likes community building. I didn’t want the inspirational answer about Traci having a vision and working hard. Wonderful. I wanted the organizational chart. Who knew the authors? Who built the partnerships? Who managed the logistics? Who was sitting around the table making decisions? And who were these women in white who seemed so personally invested in making sure this thing worked?
So naturally I went home from a perfectly lovely book festival and researched its organizational structure. Some women come home from Martha’s Vineyard and research the dress they saw another woman wearing. I research governance structures. We all have our burdens. I learned that Traci isn’t simply a woman who loves books. She is an attorney and talent agent, a senior executive in sports and media representation, a mother, Girl Scout troop leader, Jack and Jill member and summer resident of Oak Bluffs married to a fourth-generation Vineyarder. Then I looked at the people surrounding her: executives, attorneys, investors, nonprofit leaders, library trustees and women with serious professional and community experience. Even the festival’s young-adult advisor is a high school student who founded a Black Book Club at her school.
And there it was. I thought I had been admiring a book festival. What I had actually been admiring was infrastructure. Traci hadn’t simply found women willing to help execute her idea. She had surrounded the idea with capable people who brought their own relationships, expertise, credibility and leadership. Somewhere along the way, her vision had become large enough for other people to see themselves inside of it.
That realization landed harder than I expected because I am very good at being capable. Something needs to happen? I’ll figure it out. Event needs planning? Love it. Email needs writing? I can do that. Flyer? Give me twenty minutes and a Canva login. Nobody knows where the tablecloths are? Apparently I am now Director of Tablecloths. There is pride in being the woman who can figure things out, and I think many Black women understand this particularly well. The problem is that everyone around you eventually becomes very comfortable with your competence, and you can build something quite impressive that is held together almost entirely by your willingness to keep holding it, often questioning would I keep holding it? From the outside that can look like leadership. From the inside, sometimes it is just exhaustion with excellent branding.
But the longer I thought about the festival, the more I realized it wasn’t only the advisors or the women in white who were building it. The people buying tickets were building it. The people standing in line buying books were building it. The moderators, vendors, volunteers and people who brought friends were building it. Even showing up was a contribution because they understood something I think we sometimes forget: community isn’t something somebody else produces for us to consume. If we want beautiful spaces, traditions and institutions, eventually we have to decide that their existence is partly our responsibility.
And that made me think about California.
We say we want community. We want the book clubs, family gatherings, cultural events, professional networks and places where our children grow up knowing one another. We will enthusiastically tell you how much we need them, how important they are and how grateful we are that someone is finally creating them. And then comes the interesting part: actually showing up. Sometimes I wonder whether we want community at all, or whether what we really want is community programming something thoughtfully planned by someone else, conveniently scheduled around our lives, beautifully executed and available whenever we happen to feel like participating. If this month’s gathering doesn’t work, no worries. Surely someone will plan another one.
I have started wondering whether there is something particularly Californian about this, because apparently I am not the first person to notice it. Emma Grede writes about learning a version of this lesson after moving her business from London to Los Angeles in Start With Yourself. People were enthusiastic. They told her they wanted what she was building. They said they would work with her. Then came the part where enthusiasm was supposed to turn into action, and many simply didn’t follow through. I read that and thought, Oh. So we’re going to talk about this.
Because what is that? Is it California? Is it Los Angeles? Are we living too close to an industry built around smiling warmly at someone, saying, “We absolutely have to do something together,” and then never speaking again? Is there a little Hollywood sprinkled over all of us now? I am only half joking. Southern California has perfected a particular kind of pleasant noncommitment. We don’t like saying no, so we say, “That sounds amazing!” We say, “Keep me posted!” We say, “I would LOVE that!” And sometimes what we apparently mean is, I would love for that to exist, but please don’t confuse my enthusiasm with an intention to participate.
Martha’s Vineyard felt different, and I don’t think it was because everyone there had substantially more free time. People seemed to understand that the things they loved continued to exist because they continued to participate in them. Someone had to buy the ticket. Someone had to purchase the book. Someone had to volunteer. Someone had to join the committee, bring the friend, open the home, host the dinner, sponsor the event and come back next year. Showing up wasn’t something separate from community; showing up was how the community was made.
And that is the part I keep bringing back to California. We cannot say we want our children to grow up with traditions we aren’t willing to establish. We cannot say we want Black spaces while treating the people creating them like event planners whose job is to continually entice us out of our houses. We cannot say we want community and then evaluate every opportunity primarily by what is being provided to us. At some point, somebody has to bring something. Somebody has to lead. Somebody has to host. Somebody has to become one of the women in white.
Maybe that is the difference I felt on Martha’s Vineyard. Community there didn’t feel like something being presented to an audience. It felt like something people understood they were responsible for maintaining. And I came home wondering whether we can learn to do that here or whether we’re all still waiting for someone to send us the next beautifully designed invitation.
And yes, this made me think differently about Held & Rooted. I cannot host every event our community wants. I cannot lead every conversation, organize every gathering, find every resource, welcome every mother and then make the Canva graphic reminding everyone to buy the tickets. More importantly, I don’t think I’m supposed to. Held & Rooted can build the infrastructure. We can create the platform, the rooms, the resources and the place for mothers to find one another. But a platform only becomes a community when the people inside it decide to use it.
So if you’ve been waiting for an invitation to lead, perhaps this is it. If you’ve thought, Held & Rooted should have this, maybe the next question is whether you’re the woman who should help create it. Maybe you should host the gathering, playdate, start the conversation, share the resource or bring an idea forward. And if you have expertise, relationships and leadership you believe could help shape where this organization goes next, perhaps you should be sitting at our advisory table. I don’t want to build a community where hundreds of women wait to see what one woman has planned for them. I want to know whether we can build one where hundreds of women understand they have something worth contributing.
The Martha’s Vineyard Black Book Festival itself is proof that things don’t have to be old before they matter. Its first festival was in 2024, and by its second year Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was sitting onstage discussing Lovely One. Three years in, I was sitting there listening to some of the most interesting Black writers, journalists and thinkers in the country. Every institution we admire had an awkward first year. Every tradition was once something somebody tried for the first time. Someone had an idea, other people decided it was worth showing up for, and eventually their children stopped remembering there had ever been a time before it existed.
I went to the Martha’s Vineyard Black Book Festival because I love books. I came home thinking about the women in white. I keep seeing them moving around that room, each carrying some small piece of something another woman once imagined, and I keep wondering whether we can do that here. Can we stop waiting for community to arrive perfectly packaged on our calendars and start seeing ourselves as responsible for creating it? Can we build things our children will someday assume have always existed?
I genuinely don’t know yet. But I do know I am no longer interested in proving how much one woman can carry. I am much more interested in finding the women who look at what is being built, pull up a chair and say, “I have something to bring to this too.”
Because perhaps that’s how institutions actually begin.
And if you’re coming to the table, please know you absolutely do not have to wear white.
Although I must admit, it did look fabulous!
Always Have, Always Will ~ Kalie
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