Womb House Books, featuring new and used inclusive and feminist books, opened on Saturday in the Temescal neighborhood of Oakland, Calif., Oaklandside.com reported.
"Women's writing is the most important writing to me personally," said owner Jessica Ferri. "To me, feminism is not just about women--it's about living with the belief that all people deserve love and safety. It's about being an abolitionist, anti-racist, and anti-war."
While the store features titles by bell hooks, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Virginia Woolf, Shirley Jackson, Jamaica Kincaid, and Vita Sackville-West, it does carry titles not necessarily by or about women, but covering topics like racism, relationships, oppression, and identity.
Ferri began selling selected used books on Etsy in 2021, then expanded to include new books. Customers said they wanted to shop in person, too, which led to the bricks-and-mortar version of Womb House Books, which has about 800 square feet of space. Ferri will continue to sell titles on Etsy.
Ferri has a very bookish background. She is the author of two books about cemeteries in New York and San Francisco, with two more related titles on the way. She is a book critic for the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post and has written for the New York Times, the Daily Beast, the New Yorker, and more. She has taught at a private school in Berkeley as well as at San Quentin State Prison's Mount Tamalpais College.
"I think--and I hope--being a critic lends a little bit of extra panache in terms of being a bookseller," she said. "I hope that people will trust my recommendations or my expertise."