Why We Need Indie Bookstores to Resist & Hope!

How have used and indie bookstores survived the winds of change? Do they matter? What can we learn from them?

Over the last two weeks I have lost count how many bookstores I have been inside and had conversations with as I get closer to releasing Hearts of Glass Living in the Real World. Over the last two weeks, working with Indie bookstores I have secured the golden opportunity from 10 bookstores to present at their spaces. 2 of which have dates secured and the rest are still being finalized.

In every single one of them there are regular customers having discussions with each other and the staff. In most of them I saw someone looking for something specific for a project and the booksellers always found a path for them to get what they needed.

But there was more.

Banned Books Resistance

Every store I have been into has had some form of display and swag celebrating banned books. A banned book is a book that has been restricted or removed from availability due to objections to its content. Bans can be placed on a book in a school or district, or it can be withdrawn from a library.  There have even been attempts to ban books from bookstores. The ones banning will often cite reasons of the book contains graphic violence, sexually explicit, disrespectful to families and parents, has offensive language, or encourages “lifestyles” that are in their view damaging or dangerous.

Currently there are more than 80 books that young adults enjoy that are banned or frequently challenged. They include The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Hate You Give, 1984, Handmaids Tale, The Diary of Anne Frank, Fahrenheit 451, Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret, and all of the Lord of the Rings books. The American Library Association has a dated list, but it is pretty large.

We’ve written about the women who write banned books last year. We also pointed out what we must do now to honor them.

I was at a bookstore talking to the owner and had to step aside because he had a line. There was a group of teens buying books. As they were buying, one of them looked at a tote bag celebrating banned books. She commented to her friends, “Why is Perks of Being a Wallflower Banned?”

“It’s sexually explicit, has LGBTQIA content while mentioning rape, drugs and profanity.” I said.

Her and her friends looked at me. She asked, “How do you know that?”

“I keep track of the Mom’s for Liberty talking points in case I need to face off with their ilk at a school board meeting.”

“Do you have a kid in school?” She asked.

“Not anymore, but it still matters.” I said.

“Thank you! Have you read Perks?”

“Chbosky wrote a modern day Catcher in the Rye. That was the review that made me buy it and I am glad I did.”

“What’s that about?” she asked.

“It’s about a 16 year old who gets expelled from a prep school and wanders the streets of New York City trying to find truth and disillusioned and by the phoniness of the adult world. He feels isolated and unstable in the journey. He has a lot of shit on his plate like still mourning the death of his brother.”

I think I helped Salinger sell another book. But so did the bookstore.

The ones who would censor and ban books are suppressing ideas and conversations that matter. When a indie bookstore lets you know that certain books are banned books, the conversations and the curiosity preserves the ideas and fosters conversations.

If my book makes the banned list, I wonder what Mom’s for Liberty will say? Likely they will say that it is sexually explicit, has LGBTQIA+ content while mentioning rape, alcohol, cigarettes and profanity while mocking Christianity and powerful people who are somehow oppressed for being powerful.

If a book is removed from the public square of the library, the last battle ground is the bookstore letting you know the idea they do not want you to explore is still available. We can have the conversations and they host it.

Work With Authors Like a DJ in the 80s!

The publishing industry and the recording industry have lost their way and forgotten who they are. Bon Jovi, like many artists, got their start in a way that few could do today. Jon handed a copy of Runaway to a DJ in New York who liked it, played it, and it got traction. That world of a guitar and dream having a path to be Almost Famous is almost gone. The same is true for writers.

And yet we still grab our guitars and our laptops and create driven by some self destructive need to say something that matters. In a world of gatekeepers, the indie bookstore opens doors connecting readers with the written word.

Most of the radio programming is corporate controlled instead of DJ driven and the larger booksellers have a system in play that is predatory and favors the already famous or the ones with money.

The Indie bookseller is that DJ where a middle aged kid can come in with their book and ask, can I sell my book here and talk about it? They say yes more times than they say no. They help you with the best times, the copy for the event, and the online presence. And they want you to have a shot to meet an audience and sell your book. And if they offer to help you with the marketing, trust them. They know their store, their customers, and what works.

They Can Save Your Life

I am retelling a story I told on Feb 6 of 2024 in the article “Hitchhiking Thief and Pizza Hut“

My life sucked in 1982. This was the third year my mom was married to a cruel man. Life was hell and the library was my only escape.

I would sit there in the children’s section for as long as I could consuming magazines, then I would check out some books and go home.

One day on the way home with three fresh books in my bag, I came across 3 bullies. They roughed me up and took my book bag. I ran home and my mom’s husband and his best friend were in the house.

He wanted to know why I was crying. I told him what happened. I got roughed up again by him for being weak and told no one was going to pay for those books.

A few days later I went to the library and tried poorly to explain what had happened and I was told I could not get more books until the debt was paid. I looked at her for a moment trying to hold back tears. She stared at me, pursed her lips, and told me she had other people to help.

With her tone and in that tender age, I felt I was banned from the library.

I would spend the next few weeks just walking around the streets after school avoiding home, avoiding bullies, and just trying to survive.

I missed books. I needed the stories. When I was reading the world around me melted away. I was no longer a target for kids at school and the horrible things my mom’s husband and his best friend did to me did not exist. There were worlds with dragons and elves and spaceships and cowboys. There were heroes and hope and happy endings. I needed these things. They were the only things making existence bearable.

A block away from the library was a small bookstore. I had no money, but I went inside. It was amazing.

The floors were old wood and the shelves were oak. There was a magazine rack and comic books. It had everything and it smelled of leather and wood and paper and dust! There was a thin old woman with grey hair, kind smile, and reading glasses hanging from her neck on a beaded chain. She gave me a smile and I looked away ashamed of what I was intending on doing.

I walked over to the Sci Fi section. Something caught my eye immediately. It was a book called “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams. The cover thrilled me. I awkwardly grabbed it from the shelf and stuffed it under my jacket.

I was about to leave when I saw something else catch my eye. It was a yellow diary with a gold lock on it. I knew when I saw it that I needed this. I had to have it.

An intense desire to write down my thoughts took over. The lock would protect my words and my thoughts. This would help me. I needed help. So I awkwardly stuffed it in my jacket as well.

I put both my hands into my jacket pockets to keep the books from falling out. With my heart racing in my throat and the telltale heart beating beneath the floorboards, I headed for the door. Then I heard the old woman’s voice.

“Would you like a bookmark to go with the books you are stealing?”

I turned to face her. She was still behind the counter. I had no idea what to do. I walked toward her slowly as I pulled the book and the diary from my jacket and laid them on the counter. She asked me my name. I told her.

“I’m Marilyn. So what do we do now?”

If she calls home, I am getting more broken ribs. In a small voice I tell her she should call the police. I figured I could go to juvie and not have to go home. Looking at this moment through the lens of an adult, I suspect she knew home was not a good place.

“That is an option. But I have a better idea. You come here on Tuesdays when my orders come. You help me stock, put the boxes in the dumpster, and clean a little. And every week you do that I pay you with a book. One week I choose, the next week you choose. But you also have to tell me about the last book so I know you read it.”

I looked up and her pursed wrinkled lips smiled much in the same way the librarian didn’t. I did not smile very often back then, but I did that day. She put the book, the diary, and a bookmark in a bag, handed it to me, and said, “I will see you on Tuesday after school.”

I knew I was coming back on Tuesday.

Every Tuesday I showed up to stock shelves, clean, dust, sweep, and take trash to the dumpster. And every Tuesday between customers I got to talk about the latest books. Her books were my exposure to Poe, Twain, Harper Lee, Steinbeck and others. I was getting satire, comics, sci fi, fantasy, and after being exposed to Agatha Christie, mysteries.

Every day I wrote in my diary. I wrote about wanting to die. I spoke in detail of life at home. But then one Tuesday in the summer of 1983 everything would change.

She gave me a copy of “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Dr Maya Angelou. She said to me, “I thought really hard about this one. We are not going to talk about it. I’ll know if you read it.”

I read it that week. I read it twice that week. As she wrote openly about her sexual abuse I read through my diary. I hardly slept. The next Tuesday I came in and hugged Marilyn. I do not think I had felt the arms of another human around me since I was 9 or 10. I cried. No words were said, I just let it all out and she held me.

The next day my mom was in the kitchen. Her husband was gone for the day. I packed a little blue suitcase with my favorite books, some clothes, and my favorite comics. Then I tucked my diary under my arm, called my grandparents and told them to come get me. I went to my mom in the kitchen. I told her I called my grandparents and holding my diary in front of her told her, “I’m telling them everything and I’m living with them.” I went outside and sat on the stoop.

The familiar green station wagon pulled up. I ran to the car. My grandfather was alone. I got in and looked at him and said, “We need to go before he gets home.” He put the car in gear and I went home. My new home.

When I got there my grandmother asked me what was going on. I handed her the diary and went to the guest room that would become my bedroom.

The next day I sat in the kitchen while my grandmother made oatmeal. She handed me the diary and said, “You live with us now. We’ll figure it out.”

Isn’t it fascinating that the book that led to saving my life was a banned book introduced to me by an elderly woman who owned a bookstore?

Join the Resistance and Get a (Aspiring) Banned Book!

Getting a banned book (or an aspiring banned book like Hearts of Glass Living in the Real World) is not only an act of resistance and connection, but it is an escape that we need when things are desperate. The books introduce us to ideas, worlds, and become friends that comfort us in hard times.

Go to the local bookstore! Have a discussion with the owner, clerk, or other book lovers. Get the book “they” don’t want you to read and talk about. Start a book club, and for goodness sake, join their mailing list and social media and attend the next book event. I promise you the writer cannot wait to meet you, and you could be getting on the ground floor of dangerous ideas before they get banned!

Like this one! One that you helped create just by being you!

Ford is a traumatized former child model. Cassie is the epitome of DIY punk with a life full of poverty and pain serving smoothies at the Orange Julius. Finally there is Jenny, a young preppy with talent and dreams held back by a society not designed for women like her.

As their lives intersect in the late 1980’s at the Fox Valley Mall in Aurora, Illinois, there will be love, confusion, and dangerous adversaries with wealth and power. Ford, Cassie and Jenny just have each other. Will it be enough? How do they survive as Hearts of Glass Living in the Real World?

By going to the indiegogo, you can not only secure yourself advance copies of the book, special merch, and experiences, but you get to help provide copies to teens that live in shelters and seek resources in community centers. You also provide opportunities for ASL translators at our speaking events about this wonderful book. Go to the link, get your copy, and help others!

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/be-part-of-the-hearts-of-glass-story-and-mission/x/38415051#

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