Out North | The Real Amazon Bookstore | PBS

Out North

The Real Amazon Bookstore

Clip: Special | 2m 27sVideo has Closed Captions | CC

The Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis was one of the nation’s first lesbian bookstores.

Aired 10/16/2017 | Rating TV-PG

Out North

The Real Amazon Bookstore Clip: Special | 2m 27sVideo has Closed Captions | CC

The Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis was one of the nation’s first lesbian bookstores.

The Amazon Bookstore, created by young women in the Twin Cities, was one of the nation’s first lesbian feminist bookstores.

Aired 10/16/2017 | Rating TV-PG

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Out North is a local public television program presented by TPT

Out North

The Real Amazon Bookstore Clip: Special | 2m 27sVideo has Closed Captions | CC

The Amazon Bookstore, created by young women in the Twin Cities, was one of the nation’s first lesbian feminist bookstores.

Aired 10/16/2017 | Rating TV-PG

Problems playing video?  Report a Problem | Closed Captioning Feedback

Before you submit an error, please consult our Video Help page.

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(gentle music) - [Speaker] The books have names like, "The Second Sex", "The Female Eunuch" And the shop is called, "The Amazon Bookstore."

(music continues) - Amazon Bookstore was the first lesbian feminist bookstore in the country.

In addition to Amazon, we had A Brother's Touch in town, and that was a gay male bookstore.

And the bookstores were very much a part of the community.

- I wasn't there at the very beginning.

There was two women who were in the anti-war movement, and one of 'em, her father died and left her some money, $400, and the two of them started Amazon Bookstore.

And it was in the parlor of their house in South Minneapolis.

We had a big sign on the wall and we had neighbors harassing us, and that one had a side entrance down into the basement.

We had the whole basement.

So the whole concept of Amazon was just extremely important to this group of people.

Amazon meant something to us.

It meant strong women.

We're not just a namby-pamby bookstore.

We are here to try to change the world.

And then somebody else came along and said, "For crying out loud, let's put it in a storefront where people can see it."

- [Lisa] It relocated a few times, and then finally to 48th in Chicago.

So Amazon was Amazon before amazon.com was Amazon.

In fact, the bookstore sued the .com for trademark infringement on the name, and they won a settlement on that.

Unfortunately, it was not enough to keep them going and they closed in 2012, I think, under the stresses that have impacted a number of small bookstores around the country.

Allison Bechdel is the cartoonist who drew, "Dykes to watch out for" The comic strip, and also authored, "Fun Home."

Allison lived in the Twin Cities and Amazon bookstore actually is the basis for Mad Women books, which appears on an ongoing basis in the Dykes to Watch Out for strip.

The poster that Allison did for Amazon Bookstore shows a number of different parts of the community coming together.

Having a place like Amazon Bookstore where you could go and at least the lesbian part of your existence was normalized, was breathtaking.

(gentle music fading out)

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Out North is a local public television program presented by TPT