Black Joy Archive Collection

This collection is an effort between Letra Muerta Inc and The Black Joy Archive to curate circulating + rare materials for institutions and libraries. We also host these materials in our reading room if students want to come and consult them for free, or they can reach out directly to the artist for personal copies. The collection comes catalogued, described, and with digital images for reference.


The collection includes:
- Elegance 7 color Silkscreen by Zoë Pulley, printed by DuGood Press
- Black Joy Archive Volume 2
- Black Joy Archive Volume 3
- Black Joy Archive Zine Yesterday * Today
- Black Joy Archive Broadside + ephemera
- Sin Afan photobook (design by Zoë Pulley, photos by Violet Tamayo)


The Black Joy Archive was created in the summer of 2020 — an urgent call amidst the global racial reckoning of 2020, asking contributors to reflect on their past histories, stories, and personal archives. As we enter a new geo-political age that threatens the livelihoods of many, we wonder — what are the methods, objects, knowledge, and traditions our communities have held onto and practiced in the face of uncertain pathways forward? And in what ways are these methods lighting the path into the vast unknown? More importantly, how can we ensure that our global communities will indeed persist?


Zoë Pulley is a designer and maker who utilizes stuff to surface the seemingly ordinary stories of Black folks through mixed media, typography, and audio. She defines “stuff” as artifacts, both physical and nonphysical, that may be relegated as unimportant to some, as merely stuff. Her practice includes ongoing collaborations such as a wearable line inspired by her grandmother called GRAN SANS and a collectively authored publication titled Black Joy Archive. In 2021, she designed a zine for Combahee’s Radical Call: Black Feminisms (re)Awaken Boston at the Boston Center for the Arts. Her work is held in the collections of the Valentine Museum, the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and Printed Matter. Pulley is an inaugural recipient of the Rhode Island School of Design Society of Presidential Fellows and was awarded the Graduate Graphic Designer to Watch by GDUSA in 2023. She earned a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2015 and an MFA in graphic design from Rhode Island School of Design in 2023.