Amazon Feminist/True Colors Bookstore
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.
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A caricature of the bookstore features prominently in “Dykes to Watch Out For,” a weekly cartoon and graphic novel series by Alison Bechdel.
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< Letter to the "Amazons" from Rita Mae Brown, author of Rubyfruit Jungle: "Dear Amazons: Keep on keeping on. If we all do our chosen work it gives each of us and and others heart. it's good for me to know your[sic] out there. -Rita Mae." |
This entry is part of:
Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: 100 Queer Places in Minnesota History, (1860-2010)
(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/