The Feminist Bookstore Movement: Lesbian Antiracism and Feminist Accountability

Kristen Hogan: The Feminist Bookstore Movement: Lesbian Antiracism and Feminist Accountability. Duke University Press: Durham, NC. 2016.1 If Kristen Hogan's time at the Toronto Women's Bookstore was love story, (Hogan 86) then her book The Feminist Bookstore Movement: Lesbian Antiracism and Feminist Accountability is the longest 'Dear John' letter ever written. While Hogan fell in love with Feminist Bookstores during the 1990s and the 2000s, this books chronicles the long war and eventual defeat of feminist bookstores by capitalist bookstores. Hogan charted the rise and fall of the feminist bookstore movement through the lifespan of the Feminist Bookstore News, beginning in 1976 and ending at the dawn of the 21st century. Through creating the historical narrative of the Feminist Bookstore movement, Kristen Hogan also introduces the ideas of lesbian antiracist accountability, the feminist shelf, and feminist remembering. These three concepts are important additions to feminist thought and should be further analyzed within the discipline.2 The Feminist Bookstore Movement is separated into seven sections, categorized both chronologically and thematically. Hogan first maps how feminist bookstores formed and incorporated feminist, antiracist collectives within the capitalist system in part one, which spanned from 1970 to 1976. She then looks at how feminist bookstores remained accountable to one another, an aspect of feminist bookstore management in which Hogan believes the Feminist Bookstore News and its editor Carol Seajay played a pivotal role. Part three covers the early 1980s, which can be seen as the highpoint of Feminist Bookstores. In this section, Hogan shows how conferences, book orders, lobbying efforts, and romantic and platonic relationships allowed feminist bookstore workers to work together to influence the publishing industry on a global level. At the same time, these women were able to remain accountable to one another in their efforts to create safe spaces for antiracist feminist activism and education. It is not until part four that Hogan introduces the feminist shelf, which is the most important new idea introduced in The Feminist Bookstore Movement. Hogan ends the work by looking at how the feminist bookstore movement was destroyed by its war against large publishing houses and mainstream booksellers, such as Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com. In her epilogue, Hogan reflects on what the feminist bookstore movement provided to the feminist movement as a whole and how the ideas introduced by feminist bookstores can continue to influence lesbian antiracist accountability in the 21st century and the world of digital bookstores.3 The role of feminist bookstores within feminism is a topic Hogan has studied for over a decade, and her interest and knowledge of the topic is evident throughout The Feminist Bookstore Movement. Her most remarkable contribution to feminist thought is the introduction of the feminist shelf. This concept encapsulates the practice, common at many feminist bookstores throughout the late 20th century, of curating bookshelves so as to group books by theme and construct a syllabus of certain areas of feminist studies. …

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