Browse

Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis has announced that they'll be closing their doors at the end of June. Founded in 1970 on the front porch of a women's housing cooperative, Amazon is one of the oldest feminist bookstores in this country. It's a different verse of the same sad song of the difficulty in sustaining projects committed to independent/social justice work, thought,
and culture.

According to the announcement:

Here in Northeast Portland is a place called In Other Words Women's Books and Resources, a nonprofit bookstore founded in 1993. I've only lived in Portland for a year, so most of what I know I've learned from talking to people and reading news articles, like this.

A few nights ago I went to a screening of a short documentary called Moving In: A nonprofit feminist bookstore and the politics of place. The documentary, created by Dawn Jones (who's on the board of Bitch; photographed below), examines the bookstore's 2006 move, which resulted from being economically displaced from their original neighborhood, to a historically African-American neighborhood. The film is fantastic; you should see it if you have the opportunity.