BLACK PUBLIC JOY
Black Public Joy — a book, a movement, and a broader blueprint for public spaces.
About the Book
Black Public Joy is an urgent, deeply researched, and imaginative work from one of North America’s leading public-space experts. Jay Pitter celebrates the audacious, complex, and enduring expressions of Black joy — joy so powerful that even the auction block could not extinguish it — while showing how public space can be designed to foster safety, belonging, and delight for everyone.
Drawing from more than a decade of practice creating spaces where joy, justice, and belonging come alive, Pitter situates Black Public Joy within both historical rituals and contemporary movements like #BlackJoy and #BlackOutdoors. She blends storytelling, research, and vulnerable personal narrative to reveal how culture, planning, and memory shape our access to joy in parks, streets, transit, and neighbourhoods.
Far more than a book, Black Public Joy is a powerful call to become stewards of one another’s joy and to claim our own — a blueprint for cultivating collective delight and transforming public space into essential urban infrastructure.
Published by Penguin Random House, January 26, 2026
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Bring Black Public Joy to Your City
Partner with Jay to bring Black Public Joy activations to your city, campus, or community — transformative, participatory experiences that cultivate joy, belonging, and shared stewardship in public space.
→ Contact us to host a Black Public Joy activation or to bring Black Public Joy to your City
Other Publications & Writing
In addition to Black Public Joy, Jay Pitter is the co-editor of Subdivided: City-Building in an Age of Hyper-Diversity and is currently working on another title with Penguin Random House, forthcoming. She has been published by or featured on numerous platforms, including The Walrus, Azure, CityLab, Policy Options, Canadian Architect, The Irish Times, and The Los Angeles Times, where she explores public space, belonging, cultural memory, and the conditions that make joy possible.
The Movement
Black Public Joy is far more than a book — it is the foundation of a growing cultural movement that brings joy into public life. Each event is designed not as a traditional reading but as a public joy activation, transforming shared spaces into sites of belonging, imagination, and celebration.
These activations include Black Public Joy Pageants, where communities gather in joyful procession and expressive dress; storytelling circles and writing-from-joy workshops that nurture cultural memory and creative agency; and spatial entitlement sessions that help participants claim and shape space on their own terms. Other activations, such as public joy walks and bike rides, invite people to inhabit streets and landscapes with delight and collective presence.
Organizations, municipalities, universities, and community groups can host dynamic public joy engagements that invite Black community members — and people of all identities — to define, cultivate, and experience joy in real time. These participatory experiences spark deeper conversations about how we create and steward joyful spaces, helping us to both nurture our own joy and become stewards of one another’s.