Gladys Books & Wine is named after my grandmother, Gladys Dockery. She was a sharecropper from Mississippi who didnt get past the 5th grade but was also the person who breathed life into my dreams and encouraged my early love of reading. She was the kind of woman who made room for everyone (literally everyone) at her table. That's what I wanted to build in Bed-Stuy: a home for Black feminist and queer literary culture, a place where folks could find themselves on our shelves and in each other's company.

But Gladys has been under water, literally.

We've been dealing with repeated flooding in our basement, and it isn't a one-time accident. It's a pattern. Each storm brings new damage, and we've spent months trying to get our landlord to take it seriously and make the repairs that are their responsibility. That cooperation hasn't come. Meanwhile, the water keeps coming back, because Bed-Stuy itself sits in a part of Brooklyn that is increasingly prone to flooding. Aging infrastructure, overwhelmed drainage, and a changing climate mean storms that used to be rare are now routine. We are not the only small business living this reality, but we are determined not to be one of the ones it closes down.

So we're asking for your help.

The funds we raise will do three things. First, they'll cover the damage already done, the cleanup, the lost inventory, the repairs we can no longer wait on others to make. Second, and just as important, they'll let us invest in real protection: waterproofing, drainage improvements, and the kind of preventative work that means the next storm doesn't undo everything we've built. Finally, it will help us raise funds to hold our landlords accountable to their legal responsibility to prevent this.

Gladys has always been a labor of love and a labor of community. Every reading, every glass of wine shared between strangers who became friends and lovers who've been able to gaze into each others eyes, every young person who found a book that changed how they saw themselves, that is what is at stake here. This is about more than repairing a building. We are protecting a space that belongs to all of us.

If Gladys has ever meant something to you, if you believe Bed-Stuy deserves to keep its gathering places, please give what you can and share this with someone who loves Gladys too.

With so much gratitude,

-tiffany