Food for Thought Books

06/02/2014

Good peoples,

We are writing with hard news. Despite our best efforts, Food For Thought Books has had to close its doors. We can no longer keep the store open.

When our fundraiser this past December reached its goal we had high hopes of keeping the store running through our 38th year. We did everything we could think of to move the store into a sustainable direction. We slashed every expense down to its bare minimum. We diversified our stock and reduced prices on everything in the store. We consulted and collaborated with financial experts, community organizers, local university groups, and more.

Sales since we re-opened in our downsized space have been marginal at best. We at first hoped this had mostly to do with the bitterly cold winter and crossed our fingers that things would pick up come spring. Unfortunately, instead of picking up, they kept getting worse. We dropped our prices to below even Amazon, engaged in all manner of traditional and new media to get the word out, organized all manner of well-attended events - despite all this, sales just continued to drop.

We have now not been able to make rent or payroll for more than a month. Most of our valiant volunteer brigade have left for the summer. Neither of the two part-time workers left can afford any longer to work for free and have been forced to seek other employment due to financial hardship. We have consulted with legal counsel and have been advised to close the store and dissolve the business. This was a very difficult decision to make and we very much wish we didn't have to make it.

To everyone who bought books, who donated books, who donated funds large and small, who came to do a reading or an event, who stopped in to visit and offer kind words of support or advice - thank you so much.

Special shout out of immense gratitude and love for our Valiant Volunteer Brigade. We truly wouldn't have made it through the past years without their amazing and generous support.

Farewell, good peoples. We will miss you. Best of luck in all your endeavors.

Sincerely & always,
Food For Thought Books Collective

05/29/2014

You need to read this and you need to read this now. Absolutely vital. Thank you, Ta-Nehisi Coates!

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

05/28/2014

RIP Maya Angelou - you shall be missed.

"What I really want to do is be a representative of my race — of the human race. I have a chance to show how kind we can be, how intelligent and generous we can be. I have a chance to teach and to love and to laugh. I know that when I"m finished doing what I'm sent here to do, I will be called home and I will go home without any fear.'
- Maya Angelou

Ms. Angelou, the memoirist and poet whose landmark book of 1969, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” was among the first autobiographies by a 20th-century black woman to reach a wide general readership, died on Wednesday.

05/27/2014

RIP Stormé DeLarverie - you shall be missed.

The iconic treasure of the LGBT Community Stormé De Larverie passed peacefully early Saturday morning, May 25th, 2014. In celebration of her life and immeasurable contributions to the modern Gay ci...

05/27/2014

F**k Yeah, Brown graduates!

I’m all about Brown University feminists these days. Last week we gave a Friday Feminist F**k Yeah to campus mag Bluestockings for their awesome anti-violence — and now you have to see photos from Brown graduation this past weekend. Students used what looks like red tape to mark IX on their graduati…

05/27/2014

"...this study reveals what Jeff Bezos has undoubtedly known for years: Amazon’s success, its track record of shuttering local businesses, is as much a product of government favoritism as it is of its own ingenuity. Indeed, Amazon’s actions from its founding in 1995 provide ample evidence that having a sales tax advantage has always been pivotal to its strategy..."

Amazon’s sales have fallen in states where it is now required to collect sales taxes...We can only imagine how different the retail landscape might be...

05/26/2014

Summer reading list-

Africans, and those of African descent, have not been treated well by speculative fiction, both inside its texts and in real life. Anti-African racism is a fact of life in Western culture, and was even more pronounced before 1945. Not surprisingly, the number of works of speculative fiction written…

05/23/2014

hell yes-

Yesterday student Lena Sclove filed federal Title IX and Clery Act complaints against the Rhode Island university, which has been in the news recently for tolerating sexual violence on campus. On campus, organizers are coupling these high-profile efforts with that traditional feminist punk protest:…

05/23/2014

Not surprised-

Just weeks after the retailing giant began pressuring the publisher on pricing by delaying shipping and cutting discounts, it is now refusing orders for coming books.

05/22/2014

Not that hard to figure out-

The writer explains why honest conversations about history can lead to better policy today.

05/19/2014

A report by the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies also found that part-time faculty grew more quickly at public universities with the highest-paid presidents.

05/15/2014

"Even more so than conventional literature, graphic fiction is dominated by handsome, heterosexual, white male faces, be they masked or un-. So when a male cartoonist elects to devote his life's work to the stories of a female heroine - let alone one who's Mexican-American, fat, and occasionally exhibits le***an tendencies - more than a few people are going to ask why."

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2014 issue. Check out our entire People 2014 issue. Cartoonist Jaime Hernandez is happy to talk about Love & Rockets, the seminal indie comic series he's been writing with his brothers Gilbert and Mario for more than 30 years…