One thing about Solange Knowles: she curates culture as if her very existence depended on it. What sets her apart is her deep and constant attentiveness to culture. On 25 September 2025, she announced the new chapter of Saint Heron, a public library built around a digital archive dedicated to preserving rare works by Black and Brown artists, writers, and thinkers. The announcement arrived alongside a compelling image of Tamar Braxton, Trina Braxton and Dr Towanda Braxton Hall. Three women standing together, not as ornamentation but as a reminder to us readers: archives do not build themselves. They grow through memory, labour and shared intention, through a collective desire to widen the lens on Saint Heron and highlight the project as a collaborative act.
Solange describes the project in simple terms: a collection of out-of-print or hard-to-find titles, available to anyone in the United States via an online request. The process is straightforward: a reader chooses a book, the book arrives in the post, and it is returned in the same way. No paywall. No gatekeeping rituals that decide who is allowed access to culture. In a world where access is often the cost of entry, this choice feels like a quiet form of radicalism.
Why the archive matters
Books often disappear as decades and eras pass. Not because they were unloved or unworthy, but because the market can be unforgiving towards stories that don’t sit at the centre. Many Caribbean, African-American or Latinx works (and not only these) have slipped out of print over time. Without new editions, they become objects for collectors rather than books for readers. Think of Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall, or the early chapbooks of June Jordan, impossible to find for years. Or the countless limited-edition titles from small presses that later vanished altogether. Saint Heron treats these books as living companions, with something still to say. And here lies Solange’s vision: giving this archive a new face without reinventing it. She asks: What if these books could reach the hands of those who need them? What if access were not an exception, but the norm?
A closer parallel
For readers in the United Kingdom, the work Solange is doing might feel strikingly familiar. Brixton’s Black Cultural Archives (BCA) has played a similar role for decades and stands today as a cornerstone of Black British cultural heritage. Inside, you find an expansive archive: from community newsletters to photographs, diaries to manuscripts documenting over five centuries of African presence in the UK. Among the most significant materials are magazines such as Race Today, published by the Race Today Collective between 1973 and 1988, and Flame, a youth periodical from the 1980s linked to activism.
The letters and documents section preserves the correspondence and papers of John La Rose, co-founder of New Beacon Books and a central figure in Black British literary history, alongside organisational records of the Black People’s Alliance (BPA), which trace civil-rights mobilisation in the 1960s and 70s. The archive also holds drafts and manuscripts by poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, pioneer of dub poetry, as well as writings by Claudia Jones, including materials connected to the founding of the Notting Hill Carnival.
Completing the collection are historic photographs of Black British life from the nineteenth century to the present day, posters from anti-racist campaigns, graphic materials from Black feminist movements, and documents from British Black Power organisations and cultural festivals. Like Saint Heron, the BCA is not merely an archive: it is a bridge between past and present.
A final thought
The new chapter of Saint Heron offers a model of cultural stewardship that is both sturdy and accessible. It reminds us that preserving culture is not only about grand archives or institutional authority; it is also about the small, steady gestures that make something available to someone who might need it. In this sense, Saint Heron feels less like an archive and more like a hand extended across time. A gesture that says: Here is a story you didn’t know you were missing. Here is a voice that still matters. And perhaps that is the most radical aspect of all: not the archive itself, but the way it invites us to reconnect with the books, stories and communities that have shaped us.
Words by Adelina Zamboni
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