Gay bookshop new york
95 LGBTQ-Owned Bookstores You Can Be Proud to Support
In honor of Pride Month, we're revisiting this story that was originally published in , along with an updated directory of queer-owned bookstores by express. If you can’t build it to one of these stores in person, you can support them by shopping from their websites.
In March , married couple Amy Elkavich and MerryBeth Burgess were getting ready to launch their independent, LGBTQ- and woman-focused bookstore, hello again books, in their Florida nook of Cocoa Village. The pair saw an opportunity—a need, as Elkavich told Oprah Daily, to “serve as an inclusive and safe space for those who seek one,” to make their community a more welcoming and amiable space. “Visibility is everything in small towns, where books are some of the only windows to a more accepting world.”
Visibility is everything in little towns, where books are some of the only windows to a more accepting world.
Visibility allows people with marginalized identities to see themselves and their stories reflected in and worthy of art. As Oprah herself wrote:
Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop
History
Craig Rodwell () opened the first Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in in a small storefront on Mercer Street close Waverly Place. In , he decided to move the store to a location closer to the heart of gay life in New York. In April , the new store opened on the former parlor floor of an rowhouse at 15 Christopher Highway. With its common face and immense windows, the bookstore was a welcoming sight to queer and lesbian Fresh Yorkers and visitors from all over the world who would climb the low stoop, with its original wrought-iron railings, and step into the narrow shop, assured of a friendly greeting from Rodwell or his multi-racial staff.
article, Craig Rodwell Papers, NYPL
The store’s public presence also meant that it was subjected to vandalism, including a rock thrown through one of the plate-glass windows. Nonetheless, the bookstore remained an vital fixture in the LGBT community, stocking an ever-increasing number of LGBT books, periodicals, and ephemera. Rodwell hosted novel sig
Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop
History
Craig Rodwell (), an active member of the Mattachine Society of New York, suggested that Mattachine open a bookstore that would also have offices and territory for community meetings. When Mattachine rejected this idea, Rodwell decided to do it himself, despite the fact that he had no experience running a bookstore. At the age of 26, Rodwell rented a very general storefront on Mercer Street close Waverly Place. The shop was named after Oscar Wilde, who, Rodwell wrote, was “the first lesbian in modern times to defend publicly the homosexual way of life, is a martyr to what has recently become famous as the ‘homophile movement.’”
The shop stocked books and periodicals that dealt with gay and womxn loving womxn issues in a positive manner; Rodwell refused to sell hardcore pornography, in part because of the Mafia-controlled distributors of this content, but he did move softcore male physique magazines. Rodwell saw the bookstore as a community bulletin board, carrying announcements of important activities, as a clearing house for
The Literary Legacy of the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop
In , gay rights activist Craig Rodwell had a vision for a place that would serve not only as a bookstore but also as a space for community gatherings and activism. As a volunteer for the Unused York chapter of the Mattachine Society, a political group advocating for homosexual rights, Rodwell believed that the group spent too much time indoors and lacked public engagement. Despite the Society&#;s rejection of his idea, Rodwell remained undeterred and took matters into his own hands. At the age of 26, he gathered all of his meager savings and boldly rented a prominent storefront on Mercer Street near Waverly Place, naming it the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop.
Choosing a name that would capture the store&#;s purpose, Rodwell honored Oscar Wilde, a renowned gay figure whose gross indecency trial made him a “pseudo-martyr” within the LGBTQ+ community. The bookstore&#;s shelves were stocked with books and periodicals that portrayed gay and lesbian issues in a positive light, consciously avoiding pornography. For Rodwell, the bookstore wa