Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts is the author of Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America. It was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2011 and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, and Bookforum recently named it the “best New York book” written since the magazine’s founding. She is working on a trilogy on African Americans and utopia that explores Harlem, Haiti, and the Black Belt of the American South. Rhodes-Pitts is currently founding a bookstore in Harlem, BLACKNUSS: books and other relics, and organizes public projects under the auspices of The Freedwomen’s Bureau.