Bookstores have continued to seek ways of addressing political issues since the November election. Here is a roundup of events, programs and more.
Bookends & Beginnings in Evanston, Ill., has declared this to be "March Month," and the featured books are the March trilogy (Top Shelf) by Congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, an inside look at the civil rights movement in graphic novel form, and Why We March (Artisan), a photo celebration of the Women's March on Washington in January and its sister marches across the country and around the world. Customers who buy either of those books this month will receive a free copy of the U.S. Constitution. Since the election in November, Bookends & Beginnings has sold nearly 200 copies of the Constitution, and 150 of those copies were purchased by one customer for the distribution at the Women's March. The store also reported an increase in popularity of books with dystopian themes, including Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here.
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For the month of March, Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, Calif., is holding a nonpartisan, educational speaker series called Democracy Wise. It began on Wednesday night, March 8, with University of Southern California professors Christian Grose and Allison Dundes Renteln providing a small refresher course on the fundamentals of the U.S.'s democratic system. On March 17, the topic will be effecting change in government, with members of the League of Women Voters leading the discussion. The series will conclude on March 30 with Lindsay Bubar, the Southern California program director for Emerge California, discussing opportunities for running for office.
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On March 15, Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, Mass., will host an Ides of March Political Postcard Party; community members are invited to drop by in the evening and write postcards to local, state and national politicians. The event is free and open to anyone. The store will provide tables, chairs, postcards, pens and light refreshments, and the addresses of various politicians; participants must provide their own postage.
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The Booksmith, San Francisco, Calif., which has been particularly active politically in the past few months, is holding a similar event: on Monday, March 13, at 7 p.m., the store hosts an Ides of Trump party, the first in its new Booksmith Resists series, at which participants are encouraged to fill out postcards, to be sent to the President on March 15. As the store writes, "So sharpen your wit, unsheathe your writing implements, and write from the heart. All of our issues--DAPL, women's rights, racial discrimination, religious freedom, immigration, economic security, education, the environment, conflicts of interest, the existence of facts--can and should find common cause. That cause is to make it irrefutable that the president's claim of wide support is a farce."
The store will have postcards and pens courtesy of Chronicle Books and Papa Llama Press, including Papa Llama's new line of protest postcards. There will also be blanks cards. Ritual Roasters is providing coffee and Lagunitas Brewing Company will offer beer "in case you need fuel for the resistance."
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Greenlight Bookstore, with two locations in Brooklyn, N.Y., has launched a new literary event series focused on the voices and experiences of immigrants, with the first three events in the series featuring writers from the Middle East, South Asia and the Asian Pacific.
The series kicked off Tuesday night, March 7, with novelist Mohsin Hamid reading from his new novel, Exit West, at Greenlight's Fort Greene location. On March 14, Greenlight's Prospect Lefferts Garden location will host a launch event for Deepak Unnikrishnan's first novel, Temporary People, about the terrible conditions facing immigrant "guest workers" in the United Arab Emirates. On April 3, Thi Bui, author of the graphic memoir The Best We Could Do, about her family fleeing Vietnam for the United States in the 1970s, will speak at the Fort Greene store with John Jennings and Damian Duffy, creators of the graphic novel adaptation of Octavia Butler's novel Kindred. After that, Greenlight plans to have at least one event in the series per month.
"We live in a country and in a borough that was built by and thrives because of its immigrants," said store co-owner Rebecca Fitting. "We wanted to create this reading series because it's vital that as a community and culture, our world view stays broad, open, supportive and wide."