Verse Without Words

A Juneteenth Activation

★ June 19, 2025, 3:30-4:30PM
★ Secret Riso Club, 122 Central Ave in Bushwick

We invite you to spend part of your Juneteenth at the Black Reading Room at Secret Riso Club. Browse a curated collection of Black radical texts—communist, socialist, abolitionist, deeply rooted in leftist traditions. From newspapers to zines, artist books to political pamphlets, collective memory is stored in these printed works. `Stay as long as you’d like—wander, linger, browse, read, drift, return.

The atmosphere will be sonically shaped by STEMLINES, the endless quest of Nnenna Udumah. Explore the limitless world of music with a focus on electronic production and performance. Through this sound activation, she’ll use live synth processing and guitar instrumentation to bring distant worlds near, creating an atmosphere imbued with play, fantasy, and the unseen.

Black Zine Fair Reading Room at Secret Riso Club is a month-long installation in celebration of Juneteenth. The Reading Room is an intimate, living archive that honors the legacy and future of Black publishing, rooted in southern traditions, abolitionist thought, and collective struggle. As censorship and cultural repression escalate, this space offers a site for reflection, imagination, and care. Through community activations like this one, the Black Zine Fair continues its mission to uplift Black independent publishing as both a creative practice and a political response.