Wild Iris Books, home to Gainesville’s feminist community, is one of the last bookstores of its kind in the U.S., according to a story published last week in PolicyMic Magazine, and it plans to stay that way.
Owners Erica Merrell and Cheryl Calhoun have kept Florida’s only feminist bookstore running through donations and volunteers.
In 2012, the community showed its appreciation in an astounding way when people donated about $6,000 to keep the store from closing down, Merrell said.
The money helped the store move to a better, cheaper location that cut operating expenses by 65 percent and brought the store’s 7-year-old inventory up-to-date.
“(National Women’s Liberation), as individual women, do our best to shop at and support Wild Iris,” said Kendra Vincent, chair of Gainesville’s National Women’s Liberation.
The store essentially takes the dying art of bookselling and adds feminism behind it, Merrell said.
“Bookstores like Wild Iris carry titles other bookstores don’t, or won’t,” UF English professor Stephanie Smith wrote in an email. “Feminist bookstores put content above competition.”
These stores work as anchors in the community by drawing people in and making them want to connect, said Katy Burnett, the president of Gainesville’s National Organization for Women.
“If you go into Barnes and Noble, it’s not like that,” she said. “There are so many books, you don’t know what to do. There’s no connection.”
Although the owners and the workers of Wild Iris don’t get a dime of the profits, they hold on because it’s not just a bookstore — it’s a sanctuary.
“I think every owner of Wild Iris has put something on the line,” Merrell said. “Whether it be their house or their credit or a little bit of their retirement money.”
Wild Iris has changed people’s lives, she said.
Originating in the 1970s as a women’s space, the store has always played a part in the activist movement. It gave the courage for some to come out for the first time, and kids have skipped school to retreat to the store, saying it saved their lives, Merrell said.
“That’s why we all do it, even though we struggle on the side.”
Despite the array of definitions surrounding feminism, Merrell describes it as striving for equality for everyone.
“I try really hard with this store to be very gender-fluid and very conscious about the language we use because I have never thought that feminism was just for women,” she said.
As for what is actually featured on its shelves, the store tries to give every voice some shelf-space and give value to everyone’s story, whether it be the voices of minorities, kids, women or the disabled.
The store also offers antique jewelry and sells online books on its website.
“I think that it’s really important to have spaces like this,“ Vincent said.“ It says a lot about the Gainesville community that we’re able to continue to support a feminist bookstore here in town.”
[A version of this story ran on page 11 on 6/11/2014 under the headline "Wild Iris recognized as one of US’s last feminist bookstores"]
