Resistance is an Indie Bookstore

April 26: Happy Independent Bookstore Day!

Photo by Ugur Akdemir on Unsplash

I have never believed that life is one thing — one job, one passion, one location, one self — but rather a journey of discovery that demands flexibility and imagination to be lived to its fullest potential. At its most robust, the self is a shape-shifter. Adaptability to circumstance and whim is key. There are far too many wonderfully curious pursuits to see life as anything but an all-you-can-eat buffet.

As a result of this view, and the support of a husband who understands my insatiable curiosity, I have embodied many selves in my first fifty years — most of them with intention, and some by complete accident. All have been learning opportunities for understanding the world around me, being a better human, and finding out what tickles me. I keep a mental backlog of imagined selves from which I draw when the need for shift begins to materialize. These selves sometimes get impatient and cut the line to the front of my brain. If the time is wrong, I have to tell them to settle down and wait their turn.

One of my favorite, and particularly impatient, selves is Owner of an Independent Bookstore. It’s in the middle distance of my mind at all times alongside pastry chef, international antiquities lawyer, and gentlewoman miniature animal farmer. I even have the bones of a bookstore business plan in a file on my computer, taunting me to make it so.

Bookstores are multi-sensory wonderlands where knowledge and discovery hang like big juicy oranges weighing down the branches of their trees at harvest time, begging to be picked. The earthy smell of new paper and ink, the crack of fresh glue when testing an unopened spine, the neat piles and rows of color that cover tables and shelves, together act as a cozy embrace in which I would gladly live out the rest of my days.* They are a comfort in life’s storms, reliable in their offerings of escape, revelation, and community.

This Saturday, April 26, we celebrate these wonders of curiosity on Independent Bookstore Day. We celebrate their survival of a decades-long siege of online mega-sellers and challenges in publishing, supply-chain tech, and consumer habits, as well as recession and pandemic. We also celebrate their resurgence in recent years. 2023 saw the opening of over 300 new independent bookstores in the United States. The number continues to grow.

This year’s IBD will be a record-breaking event, with over 1600 independent bookstores participating across the country. (This handy map can tell you where your nearest indie is.) Trevor Noah, multi-award winning author/comedian/philanthropist, is this year’s Independent Bookstore Ambassador. Many stores have created a full week of celebratory activities and giveaways for their communities.

Bookstores have always been hubs for humanity. They are gathering places in which to explore, share, and discover new ideas. They allow for connections to both people and ideas that remind us we are not alone — in our towns, in our country, and on our planet. And this year, more than anything else, Independent Bookstore Day is a salient reminder of the power of bookstores as tools of resistance.

We are living in a moment when truth is losing its footing in public discourse. Knowledge and curiosity are being cast aside in favor of manipulation for profit and silenced thought. Bluster and false promises have taken the place of intellectual and practical debate at the highest levels of government. It is overwhelming and, at times, unbelievable.

But independent bookstores provide us an ongoing touchstone to knowledge and truth. They are the new agora of public intellectual life in an age when information transfer must happen in under thirty seconds to keep public attention. They promote space and time for longer-form inquiry and independent thought by virtue of the product they sell. As long as there are writers of truth, and readers of truth, and purchasers of truth, knowledge will not die.

Of course, libraries are truly the most democratic means of spreading knowledge to the public. But even those are under threat from local governments that fear public knowledge will inhibit control. By all means, advocate for robust local libraries early and often.

However, in the grand scheme, writers need to sell books in order to keep writing books. Publishers need to sell books in order to keep printing them. Bookstores need to sell books to keep selling books.

With resistance in mind, I implore you to head to your local indie bookseller this weekend and use your dollars to protect the ongoing chronicling of truth in our time.

Ask the bookseller what they love right now. They are infinitely enthusiastic helpers. Or, if you are feeling shy, here is a list of recommendations from my current reading list, for both resistance and sheer joy:

Non-fiction

• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari

• On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder (prose or graphic novel version)

• A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn

• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad

• The Good Ancestor, Roman Krznaric

Fiction

• Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

• These Days, Lucy Caldwell

• Death of the Author, Nnedi Okorafor

• The Memory Police, Yoko Agawa

• Sandwich, Catherine Newman

Have a book-filled weekend!

-IWW

*When my son was 11 and totally into Minecraft, he already knew this about me. He created an enormous multi-level, personal glass library in the sky, complete with a maze of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, napping nooks, snacks, art galleries, dogs, and sweeping cloud vistas. It is one of my favorite gifts of all time. I still pine after that library.