Magical, Mysterious, Marvelous Bookstores!

When Lilith started looking into a feature on Jewish feminists in the bookstore business, our first thought was the eclectic, beloved restaurant-slash bookstore, BLOODROOT, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, founded in 1977 by two friends who met at a National Organization for Women event.

Sadly, Jewish feminist co-founder Selma Miriam passed away in February this year. Her New York Times obituary described the store in delightful terms, “filled with the feminist canon, as well as handwritten notes from fans, including the writers ANDREA DWORKIN, ADRIENNE RICH and AUDRE LORDE, who were among the many who gave readings there.” The obit went on to note that, “the house cats were named for feminist heroes like BELLA ABZUG and GLORIA STEINEM.”

Reached by email, NOEL FURIE, Miriam’s partner in running Bloodroot, told Lilith: “She was two weeks short of 90 years old and had a long and fabulous life.”

Bloodroot continues; meanwhile its subversive spirit has spread to include new women-owned indie bookstores (among them some racy, feminist-friendly romance-focused stores) that have opened in recent years, profiled in the following pages.

Another store that came to mind early in our scrutiny was ARGOSY, the stunning, oft-photographed used books, print and map store just a few blocks from our office in Midtown Manhattan. Now in the hands of a third generation, the store was run for decades by three Jewish sisters, JUDITH LOWRY, NAOMI HAMPLE, and ADINA COHEN, who inherited the business from their father, LOUIS COHEN. Their gentle squabbles and intense day- to-day labors were chronicled by Janet Malcolm in the New Yorker in 2014. “When the sisters speak of book-buying expeditions, they grow excited,” she writes. “The acquisition of books is the activity that lies at the center of their enterprise. It is to them what trials are to litigators, operations are to surgeons.”

—SARAH SELTZER