I spent the last two weeks researching and writing, and because R was away, not really speaking with anyone, so before I am pulled out of my own little world and forced to accept that there are topics other than lesbian spaces worthy of my consideration, here are a few weird things I discovered while obsessing:
Humans Are Not Rational Creatures
STOP THE FUCKING PRESSES, AMIRITE? I know, I know, but … Listening back to some of the interviews I did with current and former feminist booksellers, I heard how insistent I was in DEMANDING that they tell me why on earth they had made the bone-headed decision to get into a field that was so obviously DOOMED to financial failure. Not that that isn’t accurate—it’s an absolutely terrible business—but I know exactly why people make irrational choices about what to do with their time and energy: They really LIKE doing those things.
I could tell that this was not the first time they’d ever pondered this question—duh; they’re incredibly smart, credentialed people who are or were making poverty-level wages by choice; they’ve thought about this—and there was never a moment’s hesitation about the answer. Deb Morris, who managed Lammas’ Dupont Circle branch in the ’80s, told me that she had first started to work at the original Capitol Hill branch when she had a full-time job at the phone company. She had persuaded owner Mary Farmer to let her open the store on Sundays, in exchange for books. You should hear the SHOCK in my voice; “So you VOLUNTEERED to work six days a week. WHY?” Deb, being an indulgent person, didn’t end every sentence of her response with “you idiot,” though she totally could’ve: “I was in the place that I loved,” she told me “I loved being in bookstores, loved being around books.”
(And yes, I realize that being a journalist or writing a book is also pretty darned “irrational.” Also fantastic fun.)
Feeling the Politics
A conversation with Sara Look, co-owner of Charis Books and More, and E.R. Anderson, executive director of Charis Circle, the store’s nonprofit social-justice programming arm, has really stuck with me.
I asked all the booksellers I spoke with if they considered their store to be “lesbian space.” All the women whose stores closed years ago didn’t hesitate: for sure. It was trickier for the active booksellers, mostly because our perceptions of gender are much broader these days.
Sara calls Charis a “queer-owned feminist bookstore,” though that is just a part of the store’s identity. “We’re also a multiracial space, a multi-generational space, a place that embraces radical hospitality,” she told me.
E.R., a trans guy who is Sara’s romantic partner, expressed frustration about the emphasis on “what is written on the body.” He told me that when he was perceived as a butch lesbian, “people assumed that because they could tell I was queer, I must be more woke.” Being read as a straight white man has led him to consider “how much we are just allowing our outward surface presentation, or the T-shirt we wear, to speak for us instead of our actions, our deeds, and occasionally our words being the thing that makes our politics manifest. My goal for Charis is that when you walk in, you feel that it is an anti-racist, queer-owned, feminist space—and not because you see one of us, and you know we’re queer.”
Something That Was Surely Not Fun If You Had to Take It, but Is a Hoot 38 Years Later
Digging through archives is the best. I found some really cool stuff, but I have sent this thing out to all the former bookstore workers I know.
This is one page from a series of tests that Womanbooks, the feminist bookstore on the Upper West Side, set for its employees in 1983. I wrote to the former owner to ask about its purpose, but I haven’t heard back yet. I know that Womanbooks’ employees started on a six-month trial, so my guess is that this was part of deciding if they had the right stuff to stay on. I found nine pages—though one is a long list of numbers, supposed to test the takers’ ability to do addition. (“Every day we add up our receipts, making separate totals of taxables, sales tax, nontaxables, and total sales.”) There are several categories of questions—“Bookselling/Publishing Industry,” “Bookstore Skills,” “Womanbooks as Women’s Center Disguised as a Bookstore: Resource Info & Referrals,” etc—and they’re all weird and wonderful. I love Question 5 on this page!
RECOMMENDATIONS: I went to the movies (well, a screening room) for the first time in 18 months to see the new Almodóvar, Parallel Mothers. It’s second-tier Pedro—the BIG IDEA that sets everything in motion is a bit too literal—but Penélope Cruz is just amazing. (A request: I realized after I left the screening, that I hadn’t spotted Agustín Almodóvar, who has a cameo in every single one of his brother’s movies. If you saw him, please let me know where he shows up!)
LISTEN TO ME: On Working, I talked to my former Waves co-host (and Thirst Aid Kit co-host) Nichole Perkins about her new book of essays, Sometimes I Trip on How Happy We Could Be, and with actor Tom Mison about … well, lots of things, including his work on Sleepy Hollow, Watchmen, and SEE. After the interview, co-host Isaac Butler gives me some AMAZING advice. You shouldn’t skip the interview, but if you’re in a hurry, you can find my question for Isaac around the 40-minute mark.
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