Amazon Feminist/True Colors Bookstore

4755 Chicago Avenue South, Minneapolis

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. By 1973,(2) the bookstore required its own space, and the venture moved to West Lake Street, later to 25th and Hennepin, then to a building on Yale Place with Loring Park frontage. Finally, the enterprise moved to its present location at 4755 Chicago Avenue South—near the Powderhorn Park lesbian community.

Amazon Ad, 1983. Courtesy of the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection.

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) Establishments like Amazon frequently doubled as community centers with book discussion groups, support groups, drum circles, and other community-based activities. LGBT bookstore were once relatively common—however, only Amazon and Rainbow Road continue the tradition in the Twin Cities area today. A caricature of the bookstore features prominently in “Dykes to Watch Out For,” a weekly cartoon and graphic novel series by Alison Bechdel. In the series, characters from a variety of backgrounds sought refuge in the “Madwimmin Bookstore.” The fictional setting is truly a reflection of reality, as Amazon maintains an extensive and diverse array stock of queer literature.

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.

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(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)