The Book Pages: How this LA bookstore responded to Roe v. Wade being overturned
Last Friday, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
By Monday, Larchmont Village bookstore Chevalier’s Books had sent out an email announcing its Book Drive for Abortion fund.
In response to the court’s decision, which Chevalier’s email called “unjust,” the store announced it would be pledging 15 percent of sales on bundled titles “related to abortion, reproductive justice, & sexual health” to grassroots abortion funds.
I called Chevalier’s and spoke with the store manager, Katie Orphan, about the program and the store’s decision.
“It really started with one of our employees, Syan, who is our event coordinator and wanted to do something, which was a response that all of us had,” said Orphan, adding that Syan, who uses they/them pronouns, offered ideas about what the store could do. “They asked me if we could do a book drive to raise funds for some grassroots abortion funds. And I said yes. And they put together our in-store display and social media. A couple of us have been working on book lists for our Bookshop.org page, and we also put together some bundles of books that we have in store that people can order through our website.”
Orphan, an author and bookseller with 15 years experience including a decade at downtown Los Angeles’ The Last Bookstore, said the goal was to raise both funds and awareness and she shared her hope for the project.
“The main one is to be able to help people who are now in a very difficult position as they try to get the reproductive care that they need,” she said, adding, “Any time you make a public statement in this way, even just by what you have on display or who you’re raising funds for, it lets people know that you stand with them, that you support them. So hopefully, that means that for our customer base or people who wander in the store, they know that this place is full of people who support reproductive justice.
“And if you are struggling,” she said, “you’re in a place that is safe and sympathetic.”
Syan, the employee who proposed the idea, had been out of the store when I called but reached out to me later via email, explaining their response to the Supreme Court decision.
“I started this initiative at Chevalier’s Books directly after the news that Roe v. Wade was overturned out of sheer sadness & rage because I have personally had an abortion in Kentucky (a trigger law state that has now criminalized abortion). In short, my past few days have been full of terror, and selling books about reproductive justice to get money to folks who are seeking abortions has slightly grounded me,” wrote Syan, who asked to use their first name only.
“Abortion saved my life and now I cannot go a day without thinking about the lives that are at risk because of the Supreme Court’s unjust ‘decision,’” Syan wrote. “What I can take solace in is knowing that the grassroots organizations that have been raising funds for abortions for decades are still saving lives, just with more barriers before them. The least I can do is use my time at work at Chevalier’s to help raise funds for these organizations.”
Store manager Orphan said customer response has been positive, adding that bookstores have long engaged with the issues of the day. “It’s a long-held tradition in our industry. Not every bookstore necessarily takes a more activist stance – I have certainly known a number of bookstore owners who aim for neutrality, which is a stance in itself – but we also think about one of the best-known booksellers of the 20th century, Sylvia Beach, who owned Shakespeare and Company in Paris, and published ‘Ulysses’ when nobody else would.”
There are other stores similarly responding; a report in Publishers Weekly this week featured booksellers from around the country reacting to the court’s decision.
I asked Orphan if the store’s owners backed the idea. “Thus far, yes,” Orphan said. “They’ve been supportive and tend to have similar perspectives on some of the more difficult issues.
“It’s nice to have ownership that supports that,” she said, adding that the store had previously stood up for trans rights and the Black Lives Matter movement. “We’re definitely fortunate to be in the position that we’re in.”
For more information or to order books, go to the bookstore’s website or Bookshop.org page.
Two books that make disagreements more agreeable are free right now
This might be a good time to mention THE FREE BOOKS.
This week, Simon & Schuster honcho Jonathan Karp announced that, beginning today and running through the month of July, the company would be making two titles available for free as ebooks and audiobooks: “High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out” by Amanda Ripley and “Let’s Talk About Hard Things” by Anna Sale.
Why these books now, you ask? (OK, nobody is really asking that, are they?)
“According to the latest polling, a majority of Americans recognize that we are divided, and that the divisions seem to be growing wider and more acrimonious. These books both offer insights into mediation, understanding, and maybe even reconciliation,” Karp said in a video statement, and then provided examples of a cross-section of readers who’d found the books helpful.
“I hope you’ll read these books. I hope you’ll tell others to read them as well. I am certain that they will enrich your approach to difficult conversations. Perhaps if we all get a little better at having those difficult conversations, we’ll begin to find more common ground,” said Karp.
Look, I think we can all agree that free books are good, so maybe Karp & Co. are already making a difference. Go to the Simon & Schuster website to download the titles and, one hopes, a few megabytes of peace for these troubled times.
Got insights for me? Please send them to epedersen@scng.com along with book recommendations and we might mention them in the column.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
Sarah Manguso shares the book she recommends to everyone
Sarah Manguso has published books of fiction, poetry and essays, and her most recent work is “Very Cold People,” the debut novel she published earlier this year. Manguso has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award. Based in Los Angeles, she teaches creative writing at Antioch University. After I saw her give a powerful talk at the Pasadena Festival of Women Authors, Ms. Manguso kindly agreed to answer our questions for the Book Pages.
Q. Your book “300 Arguments” seems to grow in popularity the longer it’s been out. What led you to write a nonfiction work in aphorisms — and are you surprised how it connects with readers?
At the time it was the book that I wanted to read, so even though it seemed a dubious proposition, I was able to convince the editor of my previous book, “Ongoingness,” to take a chance with it. It quickly caught on, and I was exactly as surprised as I would have been if it hadn’t sold at all. One never knows.
Q. You’ve written a memoir, essays and poetry, and then this year, you published your debut novel, “Very Cold People.” Did writing prose fiction allow you to say things that those other forms did not?
Yes, absolutely. Each book I write comes into its own form as it gets written. The jump between the forms of “300 Arguments” and “Very Cold People” is a wider one than those between my other books, but each book always seems exactly like itself, not a continuation of some earlier project.
Q. Is there a book or books that you always recommend to other readers?
Myriam Gurba’s memoir “Mean.”
Q. What are you reading now?
I’m rereading Makenna Goodman’s novel “The Shame.”
Q. How do you decide on what to read next?
Pure pleasure, though sometimes meeting an obligation can also be a pleasure.
Q. Is there a book you’re nervous to read?
I’m nervous to finish Sunaura Taylor’s “Beasts of Burden” because my complacency about using and eating animal products will no longer be feasible.
Q. Can you recall a book that you read that seemed like it must have been written just for you?
Any work that centralizes women’s experience of their own lives is written for me, from Elena Ferrante to the Myriam Gurba I mentioned, and beyond.
Q. What’s something you took away from a recent reading – a fact, a bit of dialogue or something else?
Yesterday I read my first Agatha Christie novel, “And Then There Were None.” There are some crazy sentences in that book, e.g., “There was no one on the island but their eight selves.”
Q. Do you have any favorite book covers?
From the past, I’ve always loved the covers designed by Edward Gorey and Ellen Raskin, as I love all their work both written and drawn. From the present, I love Quemadura’s covers for Wave Books. I love Leanne Shapton’s covers, including the ones she designed for the US and UK editions of “Very Cold People.” Na Kim’s covers are also amazing.
Q. Is there a genre or type of book you read the most – and what would you like to read more of?
I like books that look hard and humbly at hard and humbling things.
Q. Which books do you plan, or hope, to read next?
A novel by Jenny Erpenbeck.
Q. Is there a person who made an impact on your reading life – a teacher, a parent, a librarian or someone else?
I was once seated at a table with the English department of an Ivy League university. We’d had some drinks, and we went around the table and confessed what we hadn’t read. A full professor had never read “Lolita!” A poet hadn’t read a word of Dickens! I think about that dinner all the time, and of how a serious reader doesn’t always do all the homework.
Q. What do you find the most appealing in a book: the plot, the language, the cover, a recommendation? Do you have any examples?
I find the brilliance of the language the only important thing—and which contains all other qualities (except for the jacket and interior design, of course, though I also appreciate good design). And of course brilliance comes in many flavors.
Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?
Whatever secrets there were in my novel were designed to be discovered, and I believe they’ve all been found.
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