In the late 1960s and early 1970s the countercultural movement, in its anti-establishment wisdom, pushed librarians to question library-work-as-usual. For example, librarians began to investigate–and change–the way things were named in our catalogs, making subject headings more authentic and relevant. (Now, of course, keyword searching, tags, and other techniques have made all that head-banging work almost irrelevant.) Since the library profession is largely female, Second Wave Feminism shook things up as well.
Women in the Literary Landscape, (the Women’s National Book Association publication I helped write), showcases those changes in the library, bookselling, and publishing worlds. I remember, as a young librarian in the 1970s, seeing the magazine Booklegger, put out by Celeste West, Valerie Wheat, and others. It would be correct to say that the scales fell from my eyes. I was working at that time for what was considered a very progressive library system but Booklegger and the subsequent book of essays, Revolting Librarians, went much farther in their efforts to disrupt complacency. They wrote, for instance, about libraries needing to provide access to non-mainstream literature, specifically, the little magazines and alternative newspapers that were expressing views not otherwise heard. The Berkeley Barb, East Village Other, and the LA Free Press, to name just a few of the more well-known publications, offered alternative ideas, opinions, and local news, addressing populations that were then mostly invisible. An article titled “I Never See Him Come Into the the Library Much Anymore” skewered the lack of a customer service focus in reference work.
There was countercultural change in the bookselling business as well. Below, from Women in the Literary Landscape, are a few paragraphs about the feminist bookstore movement.
“Women opened bookstores that served as gathering centers for book discussion, self-help groups, meetings, and performances, with chairs and tables to sit at and bulletin boards to advertise local events. The bookstores stocked non-sexist children’s literature, lesbian fiction, books that portrayed nontraditional families, writings on women and violence, and as women’s history developed into an academic discipline, they were sources of feminist scholarship. They were also safe spaces for women leading nontraditional lives. Publishers, ever conscious of the marketplace, recognized that these bookstores meant there were new opportunities in the field of feminist literature.
“In the 1970s and 1980s there were at least one hundred feminist bookstores around the country. The first two were Amazon in Minneapolis and ICI in Oakland. They were soon followed by New Words in Boston, Bookwoman in Austin (Texas), and Charis in Atlanta, among many others. Carol Seajay, one of the founders of Old Wives’ Tales in San Francisco, started the Feminist Bookstore News, creating a way for the bookstores to exchange news and ideas. In 1994 there were still one hundred feminist bookstores, but by the late 1990s with the arrival of chain bookstores and online sales, the number declined, and by 2014 there were only fourteen.”
I still have my copy of the first issue of Booklegger (that’s the graphic at the top of this post). It’s an artifact from an earlier era, but the energy that fueled it never goes out of style. For more information about the indomitable Celeste West, click here.
Last week I wrote about the book I co-authored, Women in the Literary Landscape, which contains an overview of the role of women in various fields related to books. One of the joys of doing the research was discovering Madge Jenison, known as a “minor novelist” and the co-owner of the Sunwise Turn Bookshop, which opened in New York City in 1915. Madge wrote a memoir about her bookselling experiences, called Sunwise Turn: A Human Comedy of Bookselling. Her personality shines through on every page: warm, buoyant, idealistic and exuding positive energy. Jenison felt that putting the right book in the hands of the right reader might just save the world. One of my favorite lines from the memoir is, “Books– do I made too much of them?”
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