This entire conversation started with a tweet.

I was working on a story about coffeeshops and their historical place in society—as gathering places, communal spaces to share ideas or areas to come together and engage in community action. I asked a question about this, and Sarina Prabasi tweeted back at me: “I wrote a book exactly on this topic.”

Sarina Prabasi is the co-owner of Buunni Coffee in New York City, and as I mentioned, she wrote a book about her experiences called The Coffeehouse Resistance: Brewing Hope in Desperate Times. By the time I ordered the book and started reading, my story had been killed—which is unfortunate—but it was worth going on a journey of pitching this story, doing research, getting connected with Sarina because it led me to her book.

Sarina’s book is nothing like I expected, which you’ll hear her talk about in this interview. It’s autobiographical, and we hear about Sarina’s childhood growing up in Nepal and then going to school in the United States, then drinking coffee in Ethiopia, getting married, and coming back to the United States—all before she even talks about opening a cafe. But it all comes together. Sarina brilliantly builds these momentous personal experiences to a point—the point where she decided that her cafe could be a center for collective action.

In this episode, we chronicle her book, and we also talk about the things left on the cutting room floor. Sarina and her husband, Elias, entered the specialty coffee world after being in Ethiopia for years—Elias is from Ethiopia, and Sarina worked there for years, and that’s where they met—and found a pretty homogenous industry, one that didn’t speak to their experiences. We’ll also talk about how COVID-19 has affected the efficacy of coffee shops as gathering places, and what you can do to activate community change and organizing within your cafe. Here’s Sarina.