TSUNDOKU:
Community-Owned Models in Literature

Staff picks from Rozzie Bound Co-op and Bluestocking Cooperative.

ISSUE 1: THE UN/MAKING ISSUE

Words by Bex Noell Thompson
Photography by Avion Pearce

On the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and in Roslindale, a southwestern neighborhood of Boston, two cooperative bookstores are adopting a community-centered approach to knowledge-sharing, resource circulation, and wealth distribution. Bluestockings Cooperative, a feminist cornerstone in New York City since 1999, has long been known as a place where activists and queer people gather and organize. Rozzie Bound Co-op, a women-run space and Roslindale’s first bookstore in 10 years, is much younger, with doors to its brick-and-mortar store officially opening in January 2023. Despite their different histories, both bookstores trace the origins of their current organizational models to the pandemic. Community-centered business models (rather than profit-centered models) began to gather steam as the pandemic and racial reckonings of 2020 exposed systemic inequities in capitalist workplace structures. Prior to the pandemic, Bluestockings relied on volunteer labor for day-to-day business operations, but the crisis significantly reduced volunteers’ capacity to support the bookstore. This prompted Bluestockings to transition to a worker-owner structure in 2021. The worker-owners of Rozzie Bound–who began meeting in 2020 to explore sustainable ways to keep a bookstore open in their community–similarly caught wind of this shift in economic practices, and officially incorporated as a hybrid worker- and consumer-owned business in 2022.

Around the country, a growing number of independent bookstores like Bluestockings and Rozzie Bound are exploring worker- and consumer-owned cooperative models. Worker cooperatives are employee-owned and operated, with equal decision-making power and profit-sharing. On the other hand, consumer cooperatives are owned by customers and offer a range of benefits like discounts, voting rights, and the power to choose what products the business sells. These structures significantly mitigate the risk of bankruptcy—a fate that unfortunately awaits many small bookstores trying to compete with corporate leviathans like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, while also facing rent hikes in increasingly expensive cities.

Some bookstores, like Rozzie Bound, use a hybrid model, combining attributes from both structures. Talia Whyte, one of Rozzie Bound’s three worker-owners, explains that their bookstore’s economic model is more sustainable—with work and responsibilities equally distributed among worker-owners based on skill sets. Additionally, their integration of consumer-owners allows community members to become business owners themselves. “Cooperatives give people who would not normally be able to have ownership the ability to be owners,” Whyte remarks.

“Bookselling is not a get-rich-quick scheme,” Whyte says with a laugh. “Most people who are in this do it because they love books, not because they love money.”

For Bluestockings, the cooperative model gives their worker-owners freedom to run the space according to shared values. Raquel Espasande, a worker-owner, recalls an incident when neighbors came to the bookstore to complain about the “type of people” attracted by Bluestockings’ opioid overdose prevention program and free store—a section within the bookstore that offers everyday essentials like toothbrushes, snacks, soap, clothes, and razors, all at no cost. With a smile, Espasande observes, “Neighbors were surprised to find there wasn’t any higher-up person they could complain to. We make these decisions, and we’re not a business that prioritizes what someone with more money wants.”

At the core of Whyte and Espasande’s commitment to their cooperatives lies a deep affection for books and people. “Bookselling is not a get-rich-quick scheme,” Whyte says with a laugh. “Most people who are in this do it because they love books, not because they love money.” She regularly hands out free books in low-income communities and book deserts to combat literacy gaps. From Espasande’s perspective, Bluestockings’ commitment to serving their community is fortifying the bookstore’s financial security. “One of the ways we ensure that we can pay rent is through a membership program,” Espasande explains. “There are so many people signed up, and we would not be able to make it month to month without our members’ support, truly.” Community members’ belief in the value of the bookstore’s mission and work proves critical to its own sustainability.

To support Bluestockings Cooperative, buy a book, donate to their free store, or become a member. To support Rozzie Bound Co-op, buy a book or gift card or become a consumer-owner. Below are some book recommendations from both collectives! You can purchase a copy of these books–which span fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and history–directly from the bookstores.

Tsundoku Six

How to Protect Bookstores and Why: The Present and Future of Bookselling by Danny Caine

Danny Caine is the co-owner of Raven Book Store in Kansas City. He recently sold 49% of his business to his employees, making it a worker-owned bookstore. The book gives customers practical, actionable steps to support independent bookstores in their communities and maintain them as cultural institutions. - Rozzie Bound Co-op

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue by Samuel R. Delaney

This book is about porn theaters in Times Square during the 1990s. Around this time, Mayor Giuliani was systematically taking down places of poor, queer culture. Delaney went to these theaters pretty much every weekend for two decades and writes about the experience with such beauty. Anytime I feel like capitalism is too strong and we’re not going to make it, I re-read that book. - Bluestockings Cooperative

Storming Bedlam: Madness, Utopia, and Revolt by Sasha Warren

Bluestockings is an abolitionist space; we believe in police and prison abolition, and we also believe in psychiatric abolition because of how carceral psychiatric care is today. Storming Bedlam looks into multiple histories of potential alternatives where there were no divides in power between people who were mentally healthy and people who needed treatment. - Bluestockings Cooperative

Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice by Jessica Gordon Nembhard

This book focuses on the history of the Black co-op movement. From Marcus Garvey to A. Philip Randolph to the Black Panthers to Fannie Lou Hamer, cooperatives have played a key role in the social and economic advancement of African Americans. The founding worker-owners of Rozzie Bound read this book when we started planning our business. - Rozzie Bound Co-op

Another Appalachia: Growing Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place by Neema Avashia

Neema Avashia was one of the first authors to do an event for us when Rozzie Bound was still a weekly popup in Roslindale’s Substation. The book has received renewed interest because of GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy. Avashia’s book discusses how growing up in Appalachia informed her views on race, class, and gender. - Rozzie Bound Co-op

The Default World by Naomi Kanakia

This novel came out this past May, and I’m obsessed with it. It’s about this group of rich tech workers who live together in this drama-riddled, polyamorous community house—which would be a punk house if they didn’t have any money, but it’s this different thing. It’s told through the eyes of the main character who infiltrates this community, a trans woman who was in school with one of these guys before she transitioned. - Bluestockings Cooperative

This article appears in the UN/MAKING issue.