Feminist bookstore

Bluestockings, Lower East Side, New York, 2006

Antigone Books in Tucson, Arizona

Feminist bookstores sell material relating to women's issues, gender, and sexuality. These stores served as some of the earliest open spaces for feminist community building and organizing. ^[1]

Prior to the spread of feminist bookstores, bookselling was a trade dominated by white men in the United States. There was a lack of awareness and interest within this bookstore leadership to meet the demands for woman-centered literature being raised by feminists at the time. ^[1] Though some bookstores featured small sections of women's literature or feminist books, these were limited and did not provide the range and depth representative of this category, treating topics not centered around men as an extra section of bookshops rather than an integral part. ^[2]

History

Many feminist bookstores were established in the mid-twentieth century during the women's liberation movement of second-wave feminism, when feminist separatism and lesbian feminism were growing in popularity. Beginning in 1968 and lasting into the 1980s, the international women in print movement aimed to create autonomous, alternative communications networks created by and for women. Feminists involved with the movement established hundreds of feminist periodicals, presses, and bookstores as part of this effort. After attending the 1976 Women in Print Conference, Carol Seajay of Old Wives Tales founded Feminist Bookstore News, which became the definitive trade publication for feminist bookstores. ^{[3] [4] [5]}

Feminist bookstores provided community spaces where women could meet, find feminist publications and educational resources, share their writings, and host events. In the United States, feminist bookstores included New Words Bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Old Wives Tales in San Francisco (founded by Carol Seajay), Amazon Bookstore Cooperative in Minneapolis, and A Woman's Place in Oakland, California. In the United Kingdom, feminist bookstores included Sisterwrite and Silver Moon Bookshop. ^{[6] [7] [8]}

Magic Speller Bookstore

The call for more diverse types of feminist and lesbian spaces took place in-part because queer businesses and locations for community building were few and far between, with the notable exception of the gay bar scene^{[ citation needed ]}. Even within explicitly LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) spaces lesbians were ostracized, in addition to the broader societal discrimination which they faced. ^[9] Feminist bookstores such as Magic Speller Bookstore which was run by Zoe Nicholson from California, were created in part to combat this homophobia and lesbophobia, in response to the lack of safe spaces for lesbians and bisexual women. ^[10]

Many feminist bookstores were run as collectives, with non-hierarchical decision making and a reliance on volunteer labor. This was in line with the anti-capitalist tendencies of the women's liberation movement. ^{[11] [2] [12] [13] [14] [15]} However, it was difficult to sustain anti-capitalist enterprises in a capitalist marketplace where feminists had to pay rent, buy books, and staff the shops. The recessions of the 1980s made it difficult for feminist bookstores to survive. Some, like New Words in Cambridge, became non-profits so they qualified for grant funding. Despite these efforts, feminist bookstores continued to close in the 1990s and 2000s. In 2001, there were only 74 left in the United States. ^[7]

Establishment of Gender and Women's Studies

Feminist bookstores were essential to the establishment and growth of feminist studies in the academy. ^[1] By consolidating feminist literature and providing spaces for open discussion of issues relating to women, these bookshops became incubators for feminist intellectuals. Critical race and gender theories were produced in part by these intellectuals and activists, and feminist bookstores were key to developing the content necessary for the field to be established in the academy. Because these bookstores were open to the public and provided resources through the products sold as well as the women who ran the shops, people who had never had access to that knowledge before then had access. This enabled a more widespread call, first for women's studies and then for gender studies, as academic departments across the nation. ^[16]

Issues and responses

Though many bookstores were intentional about creating a board of owners that was diverse so as to represent diverse experiences of being a woman, white feminism was a present issue within some leadership. In the case of A Woman's Place bookstore, an alleged lack of understanding of intersectionality was suggested as a cause of the eventual deterioration of the cooperative board and a high-profile legal debate. ^[17]

One way women of color dealt with this environment was to open businesses run by and centered around their own experiences and made to raise up experiences of other women of color. Kitchen Table Press is one such example; this was a publishing company that produced literature exclusively written by women of color from all backgrounds and then sold to the public, often through feminist bookstores. ^[18]

See also

• List of independent bookstores
• Feminist businesses
• Feminist literature

References

1. Onosaka, Junko (2013-10-14). Feminist Revolution in Literacy: Women's Bookstores in the United States. Routledge. ISBN   9781135499150.
2. Travis, Trysh (2008-09-12). "The Women in Print Movement: History and Implications" . Book History. 11 (1): 275–300. doi:10.1353/bh.0.0001. ISSN   1529-1499. S2CID   161531900.
3. Adams, Kate (1998). "Built Out of Books: Lesbian Energy and Feminist Ideology in Alternative Publishing". Journal of Homosexuality. 34 (3–4): 113–141. doi:10.1300/J082v34n03_07.
4. Travis, Trysh (2008). "The Women in Print Movement: History and Implications". Book History. 11 (1): 275–300. doi:10.1353/bh.0.0001.
5. Hogan, Kristen Amber (2006-01-01). Reading at Feminist Bookstores: Women's Literature, Women's Studies, and the Feminist Bookstore Network. ISBN   9780542770135.^{[ permanent dead link ]}
6. Hogan, Kristen (2016-04-15). The Feminist Bookstore Movement: Lesbian Antiracism and Feminist Accountability. Duke University Press Books. ISBN   9780822361299.
7. Seager, Joni (2003–2004). "Overview: The 'Women in Print' Movement and Its Status Today". Media Report to Women. 31 (2): 5–10. ISSN   0145-9651.
8. Liddle, Kathleen (2005-07-12). "More than a Bookstore". Journal of Lesbian Studies. 9 (1–2): 145–159. doi:10.1300/J155v09n01_14. ISSN   1089-4160. PMID   19780272. S2CID   7766207.
9. Rosen, Ruth (2013-02-05). The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America. Tantor eBooks. ISBN   9781618030986.
10. "ZOE NICHOLSON VFA Fabulous Feminist". www.veteranfeministsofamerica.org. Retrieved 2024-04-20.
11. Love, Barbara J. (2006-09-22). Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975 . University of Illinois Press. ISBN   9780252031892. love, feminists who changed america.
12. "Closed chapter: Sisterwrite, Britain's first women's bookstore,..." Chicago Tribune. 15 August 1993. Retrieved 2022-07-04.
13. Crockett, Moya (2019-03-08). "The UK's feminist bookshops are making a triumphant comeback". Stylist. Retrieved 2022-07-04.
14. "In conversation with members of Sisterwrite Collective". The Feminist Library. 3 July 2020. Archived from the original on 2020-11-01. Retrieved 2022-07-04.
15. "Sisterwrite Bookshop". islington.humap.site. Retrieved 2022-07-04.
16. Mantilla, Karla (2007). "Feminist Bookstores: Where Women's Lives Matter". Off Our Backs. 37: 48–50.
17. "A Woman's Place Bookstore records". www.oac.cdlib.org. Retrieved 2017-03-28.
18. Smith, Barbara (1989-01-01). "A Press of Our Own Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press". Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 10 (3): 11–13. doi:10.2307/3346433. JSTOR   3346433.