Bluestockings (bookstore)

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Bluestockings is an infoshop (activist bookstore and café) in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Collectively run by volunteers and a single paid employee, Bluestockings is Manhattan's only women's bookstore.^[1] According to its website, the store actively supports "movements that challenge hierarchy and all systems of oppression."^[2]

Bluestockings Women's Bookstore was founded by Kathryn Welsh in 1999. Welsh encouraged the formation of a women's collective to run the bookstore and welcomed a variety of literary reading series, yoga workshops, and other collective activities into the store. In 2003, Bluestockings was reopened under new management, widening the focus from feminism to global justice.^[3] It has continued to operate as a worker's collective, a volunteer powered space, and a hub for activist and leftist literary and intellectual gathering. Another, unaffiliated bookstore store called Bluestocking Books is based in San Diego, California.^[4]