Mazer Archives March 2023 Newsletter | Out of the Archive: Sisterhood Bookstore

If it wasn't for the Mazer, I would not have known about Sisterhood Bookstore, founded in 1972. I started coming out my senior year of high school (1998), a year before Sisterhood closed (1999). My coming out process included Friday night adventures with my best friend who is also a lesbian, to West Hollywood, to Little Frida's coffee shop. Neither one of us had any money but we needed to get the hell out of Orange County—gasoline be damned.

Whoever had the most gas in their car, drove. Back then, we didn’t have navigators or cell phones. We drove places hoping we were going in the right direction, and if not, somehow figuring it out. I don’t know how we found our way to West Hollywood without phones. Heck, we didn’t even have a Thomas Guide. But, we were a couple of young, newly out lesbians who were determined to find spaces that affirmed who we were and thus enabled us to breathe. I can still feel the deep sigh of relief that I had as I crossed the threshold into Little Frida's. It was like stepping through a magical portal into a new land, a lesbian land. And this is what I imagine Sisterhood Bookstore was for many feminist-identified lesbians, and feminists and women in general.

Shelf labels from Sisterhood.

Sisterhood Bookstore was an otherworldly space teeming with books, posters, pins and much more, all woman and queer centric. I describe Sisterhood as otherworldly, because that’s how it has been described to me by those who not only went there for their book selection, but also, to find their community. Because Sisterhood provided community for many who were not part of the mainstream by choice or by exclusion. Sisterhood Bookstore didn’t exclude.

For those of you fortunate enough to have gone to Sisterhood, you may remember shelves upon shelves of endless categories on topics that the local library and other bookstores didn’t carry. Topics ranging from lesbian motherhood, midwifery, lesbians of color to male survivors of abuse and Latin/South American nonfiction. Moreover, small press books, such as Clothes Pin Fever Press, Kitchen Table Press, and self-published books, were accessible at Sisterhood; many voices had a space to be seen. Afterall, Sisterhood Bookstore was formed a year before homosexuality was taken out of the DSM and no longer a medical problem that needed to be “fixed.” Thus, offering such topics was novel and a radical form of activism considering the time period.

So many identities and lived experiences were affirmed on their bookshelves, but also on their walls and on the community bulletin board.

The community bulletin board was a work of art in its own right. Situated at the back of the store, the bulletin board was where one went to find out about community events. The Mazer’s Board President, Ann Giagni, noted that she used to drop off flyers for her collective called, Lesbians, Raps and Socials. The Mazer’s Director of Communication, Angela Brinskele, has vivid memories of how she took every flier that was pinned to the board, or strewn about like a painter’s color pallet. For her, these colorful flyers were a connection to events that focused on lesbian identity, whether it was a Lily Tomlin book signing, a lecture at UCLA, a film, or a part time job, or finding a room to rent from a lesbian. Sisterhood Bookstore was a vital artery through which the lesbian and feminist community flowed and had access to various women’s collectives and centers.

As many of our readers might know, in 2018 the Mazer had its reopening after being closed for remodeling. The official day of reopening was May 6th, 2018. Even though it was not processed, the Simone Wallace Sisterhood Bookstore Collection was the featured exhibit. Acquired in 2016, the Sisterhood Collection had not been seen by the public because of the building renovations and lack of funding for processing the collection. Processing collections is an important step for public accessibility. If a collection is not processed, how can it be found?

Fortunately, this will no longer be the case for the Simone Wallace Sisterhood Bookstore collection. The California State Library Grant has made it possible for the Mazer to fund not only its processing, but an upcoming, in-depth online exhibit of the collection. Despite its Everest-like climb, this extensive 29 archival box collection has been processed. The collection will be transferred to UCLA and housed with other Mazer collections. A finding aid was created enabling researchers and community members access to Sisterhood via the Mazer’s website and the Online Archives of California (OAC). But what does all of this translate to in non-archival understanding? Simply this: the Mazer is continuing its grassroots mission of placing feminist and lesbian historical objects and/or ephemera back into the hands of the history makers.

Casey Winkleman is the archivist who processed the Sisterhood Collection, and leads the California State Library Grant project to process countless other collections at the Mazer.