Support Your Local Feminist Bookstore!

Many independent bookstores— especially feminist ones—are being hit hard by the expansion of large chain stores in their area. Even a slight decrease in sales can force a small store, without the resources of a franchise behind it, to close. Feminist bookstores play a vital role in maintaining freedom and diversity of expression, and in providing the materials with which we, as feminists, educate ourselves.

Carol Seajay, co-founder of Old Wives’ Tales bookstore in San Francisco, wrote recently in Ms. magazine, “If the decisions about which books will be sold become centralized into the hands of buyers for a few corporations rather than being distributed among thousands of independently owned bookstores, what will we be able to read? Whose ideas will be selected for mass distribution and whose ideas will be excluded as too marginal?”

If there’s a women’s bookstore in your neighborhood, visit it often. Please.