Patta x Athenaeum Open Source
Education stands as one of Patta’s core pillars. The reality is that Black and POC perspectives are often excluded from mainstream narratives, yet they are vital to understanding history, culture, and identity. Reading is power, and access to diverse stories is essential. That’s why Patta is launching Patta Open Source bookshelves, a literary collection curated by Team Patta in collaboration with Athenaeum Bookstore, that centers the voices of those too often overlooked.
We’re not just putting books on a shelf. Patta Open Source is making room for stories that challenge the way we think and push us to see the world from different perspectives. Some books will spark curiosity, others will raise difficult questions, and many will offer inspiration. But most importantly, they will all contribute to a broader conversation, one that breaks old narratives and builds new ones. Each One, Teach One.
Express Yourself
Tourmaline : The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson
Marsha P. Johnson was more than an icon of the Stonewall uprising — she was a living symbol of radical joy, resistance, and humanity. In The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson, artist and activist Tourmaline brings her story to life with equal parts tenderness and fire. Johnson’s voice, so often drowned out in official histories, is finally given the space it deserves. This is not a conventional biography, but a poetic tribute to what it means to live freely in a world that keeps denying that right. Tourmaline writes with rhythm and warmth, celebrating both the flamboyant and the fragile. The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what it truly means to be yourself — in full color, against the current.
Must Read
With The Message, Ta-Nehisi Coates returns as the clear, uncompromising voice of contemporary Black consciousness. Best known for Between the World and Me, Coates here explores what remains of hope, truth, and community in a world so often divided. His writing is lucid and lyrical, probing what it means to stay human amid noise and regression. Coates traces the legacy of hip-hop, politics, and spirituality as forces of both resistance and beauty. This is no manifesto but a meditation — fierce and tender at once. The Message is a book to read and to feel: a call for dignity, nuance, and resilience.
His Story
Sudhir Hazareesingh reminds us that the history of slavery is not only a story of oppression, but also of defiance. In Daring to Be Free, he recounts the courage and rebellion of the enslaved across the Atlantic world — from Haiti to Brazil, from Cuba to the United States. He shows that freedom was never granted, only fought for. Drawing on testimonies, songs, and diaries, Hazareesingh weaves a powerful tapestry of human dignity. This book is a tribute to the men and women who revealed the foundations of the modern world — not as victims, but as thinkers, dreamers, and revolutionaries. Daring to Be Free is history that breathes, glows, and inspires.
Non-Fiction Be The Real Hip Hop
Robin Givhan: Make It Ours: Crashing the Gates of Culture with Virgil Abloh
In Make It Ours, Pulitzer-winning journalist Robin Givhan pays tribute to the incomparable Virgil Abloh — designer, visionary, and bridge-builder between street culture and haute couture. Givhan traces how Abloh rewrote fashion’s codes and cracked open the doors of white institutions. This is no glossy portrait but a sharp, affectionate essay on creativity as liberation. She frames Abloh’s legacy as an act of cultural reclamation: from Off-White to Louis Vuitton, from Chicago to Paris. Make It Ours is a celebration of Black brilliance — and of the right to define beauty on one’s own terms.
Brand New Funk
Zadie Smith is at her best when she writes from the inside out — about art, life, and the fragile boundaries between them. In Dead and Alive, she explores the fine line between creation and destruction, freedom and fear, identity and form. Smith reflects on the artist’s role in times of crisis, and on the constant reinvention of self in a shifting world. Her prose is, as ever, supple, witty, and layered — attuned to both rhythm and thought. Dead and Alive is a meditation on surviving with style, on the moral duty of beauty, and on how art keeps the human heart in motion.
Music Please
Annie Zaleski: Queens of Disco
In Queens of Disco, Annie Zaleski revives the glittering history of disco — this time through the women who made it legendary. Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, Grace Jones: their voices became the soundtrack of freedom, sensuality, and pride. Zaleski writes with energy and insight, but most of all with love for the music and the subcultures it nurtured — from the ballroom scene to New York’s queer clubs. Queens of Disco shows that disco, often dismissed as kitsch, was in fact a revolution: a stage for expression, a celebration of identity. A sparkling, rhythmic tribute to the power of beat and self-liberation.
The Patta Open Source Bookshelf will appear as a recurring feature in the Patta Magazine, showcasing a curated selection of titles available at our bookshelf at Athenaeum store in Amsterdam.
