Difference between revisions of "Amazon Feminist/True Colors Bookstore"
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Revision as of 16:42, 25 March 2010
4755 Chicago Avenue South, Minneapolis (1970-Present)
Julie Morse and Rosanne Richter began the collection by selling books from cardboard boxes on the porch of a commune near 26th Ave. S and 24th Street E. in 1970.(1) As time progressed, the amateur booksellers moved their operation to accompany the Lesbian Resource Center off Lyndale Avenue and 22nd Street.
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"Dykes to Watch Our For" characters inside Madwimmin Books, 2001. This image is the work of Alison Bechdel |
Cover Page of Lavender Lifestyles (now Lavender Magazine) Issue 9 (1995) announcing Amazon's silver (25th) Anniversary. Courtesy of the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection. |
Amazon/True Colors is perhaps a lasting relic from a pre-internet era of LGBT life. Bookstores were places of physical contact, community building, and dissemination sites for valuable information long before the advent of online social networking, mainstream publication of LGBT literature, and widespread LGBT acceptance.(3)
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Under new ownership, and with pressing legal challenges from the gargantuan online book vendor, Amazon.com, the Amazon Feminist Bookstore changed its name to the “True Colors Bookstore” in 2008, nearly 40 years since the store’s humble beginnings.(5) As the first independent feminist bookstore in the nation, “Amazon” remains a bedrock to the queer community in the Twin Cities.
(1)Enke, Anne. Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism. North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2007. Page 69.
(2)Ibid.
(3)Hicks, Dylan. "Brother From Another Planet: Gay bookstore A Brother's Touch thrived when queer culture existed behind closed doors. What it couldn't survive was life in the mainstream" City Pages, 6/18/2003.
(4)Enke, page 62.
(5)Skujins, Ruta. "An Important Announcement," letter to viewers of the bookstore's website: http://www.truecolorsbookstore.com/
Part of Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: 100 Queer Places in Minnesota History, (1860-1969), (1969-2010)