Bluestockings is an infoshop (activist bookstore and café) in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Collectively run by volunteers and a worker-owner collective, 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-powered collective to run the bookstore and welcomed a variety of literary reading series, community organizing events, and open mic performances into the store. The bookstore included a wide selection of social-justice themed books on such topics as race, class, and the environment, in addition to fiction and poetry. The event space was supported by donations, as all events were free to the public, and a cafe serving fair-trade coffee and vegan baked goods. In 2003, Bluestockings was taken over by 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]