$19.00
Animated illustration of a Black community gathered around a home
Research · Design · Learning · Community
Beyond Belonging. Toward Homeplace.
We connect research, literacy, professional learning, and cultural experiences to help communities practice homeplace.
Belonging is a feeling. Homeplace is a practice.
Beyond belonging
Discover Our Approach
A space is not homeplace simply because we call it one.
Belonging matters, but homeplace asks us to go further.
Homeplace is created through intentional practices that affirm identity, honor cultural knowledge, cultivate relationships, support agency, and invite people to participate in shaping their environments. Our work helps individuals and organizations examine the conditions they create and develop practices that move beyond the feeling of belonging toward the possibilities of homeplace.
What we do
Built with communities, not simply for them.
Six ways to work with us. Each connects research to practice, and each begins with a conversation.
Explore Our Services
Research and Evaluation
Research That Listens. Evaluation That Informs.
Thoughtful inquiry and participant voice that help schools, universities, nonprofits, and community initiatives strengthen programs and inform decisions.
Literacy Consulting and Curriculum
Literacy Is More Than Reading. Curriculum Is Never Neutral.
Literacy experiences that recognize learners' identities, cultural knowledge, lived experiences, and multiple ways of making meaning.
Professional Learning and Facilitation
Move Beyond Awareness. Transform Practice.
Workshops, institutes, and facilitated learning that connect scholarship to the realities of teaching, leadership, and organizational life.
Classroom and Library
Build Spaces Where Stories, Identities, and Possibilities Grow.
Curated collections, classroom text sets, book fairs, and library partnerships, with Asè Book Boutique.
Author Support and Book Experiences
Connecting Stories to Readers. Connecting Readers to Community.
Launches, literary events, reader engagement, and book-based programming that extend beyond the page.
Speaking and Conversations
Ideas That Challenge. Conversations That Move Us.
Jennifer N. Brooks on identity, culture, Black girlhood, curriculum, and the possibilities of homeplace.
Our research foundation
Explore Homeplace Literacies
Scholarship that informs practice.
Grounded in Homeplace Literacies, our approach brings together Black feminist intellectual traditions, literacy, identity, cultural knowledge, and community-centered learning.
We translate these ideas into research, curriculum, professional learning, consulting, and experiences that help people rethink how they teach, lead, and build community.
Select a dimension to read how we define it. Each one shapes and depends on the others.
Belonging
Recognition, affirmation, connection, and meaningful participation.
Healing
Care, reflection, joy, restoration, and opportunities to express one's humanity.
Placemaking
The active creation and transformation of meaningful spaces through relationships, cultural practices, and collective participation.
Liberation
The critical examination of limiting narratives and structures, the exercise of agency, and the imagination of alternative possibilities.
(Re)membering
Engagement with personal histories, ancestral knowledge, cultural memory, and intergenerational relationships.
Interconnected, not sequential: each dimension shapes and depends on the others.
In the spirit of bell hooks
Homeplace [is] where we can recover ourselves.
bell hooks, Yearning (1990)
In the spirit of bell hooks
The Homeplace Institute is built in the spirit of bell hooks, who gave language to homeplace as a site of care, resistance, and possibility. Her work grounds our belief that we can build spaces and systems where Black people can exhale, exist fully as themselves, and be free to imagine what comes next.
Signature initiative
Black Girls R.E.A.D.
Restore. Envision. Affirm. Dream.
A literacy collaborative centering Black girls, Black literature, identity, cultural knowledge, creativity, and community.
Black Girls R.E.A.D. is an important part of the research and practice informing the Institute.
Read the five dimensions
Five dimensions. Five shelves.
Interconnected, not sequential. In Asè Book Boutique, each dimension of homeplace has its own shelf. Keep scrolling.
Belonging
Recognition, affirmation, connection, and meaningful participation.
Healing
Care, reflection, joy, restoration, and opportunities to express one's humanity.
Placemaking
The active creation and transformation of meaningful spaces through relationships, cultural practices, and collective participation.
Liberation
The critical examination of limiting narratives and structures, the exercise of agency, and the imagination of alternative possibilities.
(Re)membering
Engagement with personal histories, ancestral knowledge, cultural memory, and intergenerational relationships.
Signature initiative · Literary retail partner
Explore Asè Book BoutiqueAsè Book Boutique
Where Books Become Experiences.
Asè Book Boutique connects readers, classrooms, and communities with literature that inspires reflection, conversation, discovery, and connection. As the Institute's literary retail partner, Asè supports book-centered learning, curated collections, classroom and library needs, and literary experiences.
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Last Thursday of the month · 7:00 PM CT
Pages With My Homegirls
Our monthly book club for Black women who read. We pick one book and talk about it honestly.
Join the book club →
Chicago & online
Bookish events
Reading socials, book discussions, and literary pop-ups, designed to feel welcoming, relaxed, and rooted in community.
See upcoming events →
Homeplace Compass™
How are you building homeplace for your community?
Take the Compass
Homeplace Compass™
Is your space practicing homeplace?
Explore how belonging, healing, placemaking, liberation, and (re)membering show up in the spaces you create. The Homeplace Compass offers a starting point for reflection and helps identify questions worth exploring more deeply.
A research-informed reflection tool grounded in Homeplace Literacies.
What is homeplace?
“For those who dominate and oppress us... homeplace [is] where we can recover ourselves,” bell hooks wrote in 1990. At the Institute, homeplace is the intentional and ongoing practice of creating spaces where identity is affirmed, cultural knowledge is valued, relationships are cultivated, critical reflection is encouraged, and people can participate in shaping their experiences.
The five dimensions you'll reflect on
Belonging — recognition, affirmation, connection, and meaningful participation.
Healing — care, reflection, joy, restoration, and opportunities to express one's humanity.
Placemaking — the active creation and transformation of meaningful spaces through relationships, cultural practices, and collective participation.
Liberation — the critical examination of limiting narratives and structures, the exercise of agency, and the imagination of alternative possibilities.
(Re)membering — engagement with personal histories, ancestral knowledge, cultural memory, and intergenerational relationships.
Before you begin
What space are you reflecting on?
This helps frame your reflection. There's no wrong answer.
Exploratory self-reflection
Your reflection
Your responses offer a starting point for considering how homeplace may be practiced within your setting. Explore where your current practices align with the five dimensions and where additional reflection, conversation, or intentional design may be useful.
Want to think this through together?
Bring your reflection into a conversation with us. We'll look at where your practices align with the five dimensions and where intentional design could help.
Request a Homeplace ConsultationThe Homeplace Compass is an exploratory self-reflection tool informed by research. It is not a validated assessment and cannot determine whether a space has achieved homeplace. Use it as a starting point for reflection and conversation.
Meet the founder
A reader first.Then a teacher, a researcher,and a bookseller.
Jen Brooks taught middle school ELA, now prepares teachers, and has spent years curating Black literature for a community of readers. She started Asè to stock the books she wished she'd had as a young Black girl, and the Institute to help others build the spaces those books describe.
Today the Homeplace Institute connects research, literacy, professional learning, and cultural experiences to help schools, organizations, and communities practice homeplace.
Work with usExplore Our Services
What kind of space are you creating?
Whether you are designing curriculum, evaluating a program, supporting educators, developing a learning experience, or bringing literature into your community, The Homeplace Institute invites you to explore what becomes possible when homeplace is practiced intentionally.