Trailblazing Women’s Bookstore New Words

Accommodates a New Era

By Susie Davidson

CORRESPONDENT

Since its inception, change and adaptation have been the hallmark of Cambridge’s preeminent feminist bookstore New Words, located at 186 Hampshire St. in Inman Square. Now, the collective which spawned a movement of womanly empowerment, as it smoothly reflected shifting sociological, political and economic times, is reinventing itself.

Its 28-year-run as the oldest continuously-owned women’s bookstore in the U.S. ended when, following an auction, the doors were shut on Oct. 6. However, enlightened women need not fear, as its future nonetheless looms large on the cultural horizon.

The plan is for the store to metamorphose into a new non-profit organization, the Center for New Words (CNW), to open in the Fall of 2003 at an as-yet-undisclosed Cambridge site. The new Center will incorporate programs focusing on adult and child literacy, and the promotion, production and distribution of reading and writing. It will also include performance and meeting spaces, and even computer and workshop facilities. In short, it will be even more of a nucleus for the advancement and encouragement of feminist causes and concerns than ever before.

And yes, there will be a a bookstore. But the new venture will go far beyond, as it conforms to changing technological and societal patterns which were pinpointed in a Ford Foundation-funded study its co-owners recently undertook.

“Two years ago,” said New Words President and Co-Founder Gilda Bruckman, “we began to think about the future of womens’ bookstores, given the fact that we opened in 1974.”

Many other womens’ bookstores began at about the same time, reflecting the movement for womens’ bookstores and womens’ publishing of the early 70s.

“It was time to really think,” Bruckman continued, “about what function our model was serving at this point. Politics had progressed, demographics had changed, publishing, bookselling had changed – really almost nothing hadn’t changed in 28 years. It was time to rethink the whole process and figure out what needs our community had which weren’t being met.”

Former bookstore partners Joni Seager and Laura Zimmerman will join Bruckman in the endeavor. Seager, currently treasurer of the New Words Live nonprofit venture, has run events and programming at the bookstore as well as at the Cambridge Public Library, Simmons College and MIT, and has worked collaboratively with numbers of other local organizations. She will become the director of the Center for New Words, while Zimmerman, on the board of New Words Inc. and New Words Live, will assume the role of assistant director.

New Words’ papers will be archived at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

New Words Live’s Fall 2002 programming will continue uninterrupted; its Author Reading Series will include Nancy Milford, Michelle Tea, Dorothy Allison, Amy Bloom, Carmit Delman and Rhoda Kanaaneh. Most of these events will be held in the existing bookstore’s Reading Room, which will remain open for programs and transitional activities through the year.

New Words has garnered national recognition for its innovative fostering of women’s writing, activism, culture, art, and ideas. Beloved to thousands of customers and supporters, the pioneering center has helped launch the careers of dozens of women writers.

“When we opened,” said Bruckman, “many of the books that we carried were not available anywhere, including the first editions of The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective’s Our Bodies, Our Selves project, the first Ruby Fruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown, Marge Piercy’s Small Changes, May Sarton’s books, Ms. Magazine’s early editions and Cambridge-based The Second Wave Magazine.” The store also carried full selections of classic women authors not regularly stocked at other stores such as Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, the Brontes and George Eliot. They carried Emma Goldman manifestos, suffragette materials, Margaret Sanger’s work and Susan B. Anthony. They also provided a space where women could go to find information about themselves, their history, their health, and their political, social and personal options. “It was a place,” said Bruckman, “where they could explore all this in an environment that was safe and supportive.

“While the loss of the physical presence of New Words Bookstore feels considerable,” said Cambridge Women's Commissioner Nancy Ryan, “I am excited that the new Center will provide the means for taking women's words out into the community in a dynamic way. We look forward to the new role of the Center for New Words in our lives, and the promise of revitalized feminist literary activism.”

"New Words Bookstore,” said feminist author and scholar Carol Gilligan, “has always been a place where the voices of women are listened to and heard. Authors, readers, scholars and activists alike have found a home here. This kind of space is more important now than ever. I’m certain that in the coming decades, we will turn to the Center for New Words again and again to inspire and transmit women's voices in ways we have not yet even imagined."

"We intend to 'lift as we climb', said Bruckman, “in developing a model that can be transplanted and replicated. We feel very confident that we now have that model, and we are eager to devote all our resources to making it a reality.”

For information, visit newwords@world.std.com.