A Woman's Place (fully ICI, Information Center Incorporate: A Woman's Place) was a feminist bookstore in

Oakland, California Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, California, Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major We ...

. Opened in 1970, it was one of the first two feminist bookstores in the United States.

History

A Woman's Place was founded in 1970 An opening date of January 18, 1972, is given here. by a

collective A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an e ...

of eight women who had previously been selling feminist publications on the street. An outgrowth of the Bay Area Gay Women's Liberation, it was one of the first two feminist bookstores in the United States. Intended as a community space for women, A Woman's Place stocked

nonfiction Non-fiction (or nonfiction) is any document or media content that attempts, in good faith, to convey information only about the real world, rather than being grounded in imagination. Non-fiction typically aims to present topics objectively ...

books by men, but only sold

fiction Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying character (arts), individuals, events, or setting (narrative), places that are imagination, imaginary or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent ...

and

poetry Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...

if it was written by a woman. Members of the collective also focused on providing books from the perspective of the

Third World The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. The United States, Canada, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Southern Cone, NATO, Western European countries and oth ...

and the

working class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...

. The Women's Press Collective moved there shortly after the store opened. The founders of Old Wives Tales, a feminist bookstore in San Francisco, were former members of the collective at A Woman's Place. In 1982, the bookstore stocked 10,000 different books. In 1982, a disagreement within the collective involving

racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race or ethnicity over another. It may also me ...

as well as

lesbianism A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homo ...

versus feminism with acceptance of male allies culminated in two or three older and

white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

members locking out the others from the bookstore, leading to

arbitration Arbitration is a formal method of dispute resolution involving a third party neutral who makes a binding decision. The third party neutral (the 'arbitrator', 'arbiter' or 'arbitral tribunal') renders the decision in the form of an 'arbitrati ...

. The four members who were locked out ( Darlene Pagano, Elizabeth Summers, Jesse Meredith, and Keiko Kubo) described themselves as "one Italian, one

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

, one

Black Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without chroma, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness.Eva Heller, ''P ...

, one Asian". The store later reopened under new management, and in 1983 an arbitration agreement was reached in 1983 that involved the incorporation of the bookstore. A Woman's Place closed in 1989.

References

Feminist bookstores Feminism in California Bookstores in the San Francisco Bay Area Independent bookstores of the United States 1970 establishments in California 1989 disestablishments in California {{AlamedaCountyCA-struct-stub