Radical bookstores are that important. Not just in theory, not just on paper, but in how we materially change the world. Bookends, the lesbian marxist bookstore in Florence, dauntingly takes on the task of running a bookstore aligned with its values, pushing against the imagined lesbian history of Northampton and working tirelessly to revive the real one.
Walking into Bookends feels like entering the living room of an eccentric lesbian aunt. A wall of local event posters, a ‘take a mask’ sign, and staff book recommendations welcome customers on their way in. Mismatched bookshelves of different sizes and styles form the store into a labyrinth, topped off by Palestine Solidarity signs, ivy plants and a stuffed lion. A lesbian flag covers the top of the entrance to their long narrow basement, a remnant of its former life as a bowling alley turned bookstore and music venue. Madden Aleia, one of the owners of the store, eagerly greets me with a recent shipment of Leslie Feinberg’s “Stone Butch Blues” in hand, which they sell at exactly $12.12 (Feniberg’s price). Aleia and Ira Beare, another employee of Bookends, usher me to a circle of old armchairs in the middle of the book shelves, where our passionate conversation about the bookstore, queer novels and Northampton lesbian life begins.
On Halloween in 2022, Madden Aleia took the chance buying Bookends in “what I felt [like] was a good deal, but a really bad financial decision.” For the past 30 years, previous owners stocked Bookends with over 40,000 books specializing in journalism and esoterica, along with popular second-hand genres like mystery novels and bestsellers. Aleia slowly added critical marxist theory and feminist studies to the collection, pulling in requests from customers and friends along the way. Luckily, Aleia did not have to buy all the theory and feminist books from scratch. In one particular case, in an inherited box with books about buddhism and childrens stories, Aleia found an ultrarare hardcore gay erotica about sailors called Sailor for Sale or Rent. They remarked this as a common experience.
Importantly, Aleia and Bear do not plan to make Bookends a place that only sells or stocks these unique and eccentric books, emphasizing that Bookends exists to fill a gap in the community, the gap of lesbian bookstores, third spaces, and D-I-Y music efforts. They want people to come in and contribute to this effort, monetarily and physically. So, they continue shelving books that fit the neighborhood and retirement home demand like mystery novels and best sellers, while also providing a space where someone can sit down and read a $2.00 40-year-old lesbian surrealist poetry book for the afternoon.
Much of their inspiration and ethics come from their time at Flywheel Arts Collective in Easthampton, a collective focused on aligning their values with the way they run their events. Bringing these ideas to Bookends, Beare and Aliea weave Flywheel Arts’s commitment to cooperative structures, and intergenerational practices into the fabric of the store. Tangibly, Beare and Madden bring these ideals into how they run and conceptualize events at Bookends. Just like the Collective, they see Bookends as an opportunity to push back against the dying culture of D-I-Y music in Northampton, despite being their biggest money pit.. With experience playing house shows in pre-pandemic Northampton, Beare and Aleia want Bookends to resemble and revive the scrappiness, adaptability and low pressure atmosphere of those house shows.
Their approach to booking shows hold a “certain type of unity and ethic to it,” like bands taking a majority portion of the cover charges or booking bands from the house show network. This results in a deep community care into Bookends, with infamous local bands donating musical equipment to keep the space going. Additionally, their monthly cover shows consist of their friends coming together and playing cover songs to raise profits specifically for Bookends or the Sexual Minority Archives. Running a lesbian Marxist bookstore comes with its many challenges like homophobic harassment and pink washing. Yet, friends and community members showing their appreciation in those ways are the most meaningful and sustaining moments for them.
This ethic bleeds into the way they interact with customers, “if you recommend us a book, we are so extremely not bullshitting that we will read that book” Beare remarked. I took this as a chance to ask them about any books they read because of customers. Beare and Aleia fell into a rant about an awful lesbian novel they critiqued with a customer, when a curious nearby customer — who actually attended the book signing of said awful lesbian novel — chimed in. After a rapid back and forth about the book, I understood Beare and Aleia’s earlier claim that customers were “on it and locked in” to be true.
After the interview, Aleia and Beare sent me off with a lesbian portrait book in hand and renewed sense of purpose. Instead of imagining and intellectualizing a lesbian history that we read or observe through social media, Bookends reveals what can happen when lesbians start engaging with current lesbian culture. Aleia points out that “for queer people, and lesbians in particular, when we are so disjointed from our own history, there is so much high pressure and so much weight.” Aleia instead suggests that “if you just ration it down to — I would like to have butch lesbian fashion show. ust do one thing, and it will give you the energy to do another thing, and it will just increase.”
Aleia and Beare wanted to live their lesbian dream of running a bookstore with their friends and partners. Now they are doing just that because they started engaging, learning, and committing to the idea of thriving lesbian community and life. This store is far from easy to run, with hours of unpaid labor and outside factors stacked against them. Aleia and Beare work tirelessly to keep Bookends afloat, relying on community lesbian history to motivate them to keep going. They stressed that Bookends needs lesbians to make Bookends sustainable, calling for people to move their support from abstract to material in any way they can. Lesbians can create the spaces and experiences we desire, which we can start doing by supporting Bookends. This looks like going to dyke movie nights, attending weekly shows, donating at their Palestinian fundraisers, cheering on butch arm wrestling, cringing at lesbian speed dating or purchasing an obscure lesbian novel. A fulfilling, meaningful and burgeoning lesbian community exists, so go to Bookends and start engaging with it.
