Category Archives: bookstore management

Who, Us?

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     Tuesday past at Needlework Night was the annual post-holiday Leftovers Party. We hold two of these each year, one the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, the other the Tuesday after New Year.  Each needleworker brings some leftover food—the rules are very specific: no cooking; no prettying up; just haul out the plate with the cling film cover and bring it along—and drink.
     After New Year, each attendee also brings a leftover present for the Rude Santa gift exchange (the one where you can steal each other’s presents).
     So no one, least of all Jack (who had to fly solo that night because I was out of town) thought anything about the brown paper-wrapped package sitting on the end table alongside one of the shelves. The Needleworkers pulled leftover Christmas crackers, ate cheese ball and fruitcake, and traded stories of in-law hells, house guests from hell, and drunken office party hellraisers as they swapped crockery, sweaters, cookie tins and other “I don’t want this” presents accumulated during the 2012 holiday run.
     But as the party ended and everyone began putting on coats, pulling off their paper crowns, and tucking their new gifts for old into their needlework baskets, the package still sat there. Jack picked it up. It definitely contained books.
     “Anybody forget this?” he asked. All demurred. Jack shrugged and tore open the paper.
     You guessed it: Fifty Shades of Grey, the trilogy.
     “All right, ‘fess up. Who left these?” Jack said with a laugh, waving them above his head amid the women who form Big Stone Gap’s library board, hospital auxiliary, and church vestry committees for every conceivable denomination.
     They all looked shocked. As if, said their lightly mascaraed eyes beneath the sensible pageboy haircut variations.
     So, we have another set of Those Books in the bookstore—or had. Someone bought them Friday afternoon, half off retail since they were used. There were some yarn strands left as bookmarks in a couple of passages, but in a small town, it doesn’t do to pay close attention to who’s working with which fibers. Live and let knit.

The Quagmire Quandary

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At least once a year, Jack and I discuss whether we should have a LGBT section in the bookstore. We also debate the pros and cons of an African Interest shelf.

See, once you open this can, the worms just explode in all directions. Why do we need an African section? Alice Walker and Toni Morrision are just fine in Classics, thanks. But what about the annual publication from a contest of short stories by African American writers? The biography of Sojourner Truth? The ethnographic classic “Why are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” That obscure text that often gets misrepresented, “White Men on Race?” If they were shelved together, people could find them easily, instead of having to know they existed and search the appropriate category.

But, if we put “black” books together, where does the color line stop? Where would we put that horrible nasty book about how Afri-centrism is wrong and should be expelled from Academia? Does Maya Angelou have to leave Classics? Would romance novels featuring people with black skins on their covers relocate from the Luv Shack?

What about same-sex partner books? We can differentiate between Rita Mae Brown’s mysteries and her social commentary, no bother, but what do we do about Lisa Alther’s Five Minutes in Heaven? Dina McGreevey’s memoir Silent Partner? And is anyone going to bring up the word “ghettoization” or get mad because we even HAVE a LG-et al. section?

We don’t know what to do. Our default is to do nothing. There are lots of wonderful books in the shop that particular people—not just people with black skin or same sex partner preferences, but people who like to cook vegetarian, people who love dogs, etc.—would like if they knew they were here. Categorization is a sticky wicket at the best of times, and we’re not even good at simpler divisions, like separating Southern from General Fiction. (We keep arguing the toss on Florida.)

Divvying up intense categories based on concepts over which people have literally been killed throughout history? Heh. We want to do the right thing. And we haven’t got a blooming clue what that is.