Shut Up and Read: A Memoir from Harriett’s Bookshop

The author of It’s Me They Follow chronicles the improbable true story of how she left an abusive past to build a bookshop that survived the Covid pandemic and become an international sensation.

Jeannine Cook always thought she’d open a bookshop in her old age. Raised by a blind librarian, books were integral to her life, and she expected she would eventually write one as well. Instead, Jeannine found herself a burnt-out workaholic with three jobs and no time to read or write, feeling like she hadn't fulfilled her purpose.

In her journal, Jeannine began an imaginary dialogue with Harriet Tubman, “Q&As” she dubbed Conversations with Harriett. Jeannine wondered how Harriet became a “wade through waist-high water in the winter: type of woman—and how she could become one too.

On February 1, 2020, Jeannine fulfilled her dream and opened a bookstore in Philadelphia which she named after her hero and inspiration, Harriet Tubman. Harriett’s Bookshop would be a place to celebrate women authors, artists, and activists. While the name was ironic—Harriet could neither read nor write—it was also fitting. The City of Brotherly love was one of Harriet's first stops to freedom on the Underground Railroad. But in only six weeks, Jeannine would be forced to shut the shop’s doors when Covid turned the world upside down—not knowing whether her dream would survive.

Five years later, this small independent bookshop is thriving, with satellite stores in unconventional places, from movie theaters to horse trailers. Despite global death and destruction, book bans, the downward spiral in readership, the lack of physical customers, AI, and more, Jeannine's shops have survived. Shut Up & Read is her story—the story of the little bookseller who could, and of the woman who has been the driving force behind it all.