Women's Bookstores: A Dying Breed

Walking into one of the few remaining women's bookstores can feel more like walking into the impulse-buy area of a supermarket checkout lane.

Forced to include items that will help prop sales, the stores -- from In Other Words, in Portland, Ore., to Women and Children First in Chicago -- have begun stocking jewelry, journals, incense, greeting cards or even copies of the bestselling The Da Vinci Code.

In 1997, 175 feminist bookstores dotted the country, but today only about 35 are still in business. Among these a few stalwarts have emerged. There is Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis, which has been going at it for 35 years, began by selling lots of lesbian-centered works and anything by Gloria Steinem, said store employee Kathy Sharp.

A Room of One's Own, a 30-year-old store in Madison, Wis., is the second oldest and was one of the pioneers in popularizing titles such as Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle, now a feminist classic.

Most of the remaining women's bookstores can be found in small cities of the Midwest, South or coastal states. "There are virtually none left in big cities," says Linda Bubon, owner of Women and Children First, whose store, in a progressive part of Northside Chicago, is one of the big-city exceptions. Another is Bluestockings in New York City, which opened in 1999 and re-opened under new ownership, as a radical activist center, two years ago.

Although her 25-year-old store is still making it, Bubon says the last couple of years have been all uphill. While not wanting to detail the extent of the store's financial struggle, Bubon says Women and Children First has had to contend in the past eight years with the openings of seven Borders or Barnes and Noble stores within three miles of her front door. Moreover, she faces the expansion into book sales by Amazon.com, Borders, and Target. Her non-profit business, she says, cannot provide the discounts of her corporate counterparts.

Losing Community Centers

As bookstores disappear, so do the intellectual community centers they once provided for browsing and attending talks and readings.

"There is a struggle for public space, period," says Bubon. "It is desperately needed in a democracy."

In looking back at her years running the shop, Bubon says the first two years after the store's 1979 opening were particularly memorable. There was the time when she and her co-workers closed up shop to rally for the Equal Rights Amendment. There was also that time when people wrapped around Armitage Avenue and then packed into her tiny shop to hear Rita Mae Brown give a reading.

Today, she says, loyal friends and customers keep the store going. After buying a book, some say "keep the change."

While the larger stores may provide many of the same or similar forums and readings -- as well as crucial amenities such as Internet access and coffee shops -- some say it's not the same as meeting in what feels like women's special turf.

"There is something irreplaceable about the face-to-face aspect of a bookstore where there is support for a woman who wants to write a novel, can't get pregnant or was raped and seeking help and guidance," says Sue Burns, owner of In Other Words.

Amid the sense of loss, some see the silver lining.

"You could think, 'what a horrible thing, we don't have these bookstores anymore,'" says Carol Seajay, founder of the now defunct "Feminist Bookstore News," an on-line forum about women's bookstores. "But the need that inspired the bookstores has changed. Feminism's becoming integrated with other social movements. You had to convince people before that sexual harassment was an essential concern. You don't need to do single-issue consciousness-raising anymore. It's not a bad thing if the needs have been met. They have changed mainstream publishers, distribution and people's reading habits. In that sense, it's a huge success."