Wisconsin Life

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My name is Gretchen Treu, and I am a co-owner of A Room of One's Own Bookstore. I grew up in the country. I was an only child. I had wonderful parents who loved me. I biked into town in the summers and hung out at the library all day. I, early on, was always pushing whatever book I was reading on my close friends.

laughs

And we would forge, kind of, a little community around the stories we were bringing to each other. And I guess that really has informed how I relate to books. I've never thought of books as being solitary. Just, I was here picking up a book, and I said... I went to college, and I just kept gravitating back to being an English major. And I used to come and hang out at the store even before that when I was in high school. It was the trendy place to go as a closeted queer youth. I would hang out there. I would get a lot of coffee in my early undergrad days. And I started out working in the caf that used to be in the space. And so, I just kind of slowly accreted more and more jobs until finally, I was a full-time employee, and I did that for several years before the owners at the time wanted to retire. And so, they were looking for someone to buy the store. Our landlord indicated that they were not going to be renewing the lease. There was no option. And that they are selling the building. We were about eight months into the pandemic when we got this news, so it was really tough. Umm...

nervous laugh

But we've been scraping it through. It would never have been my choice. Moving a bookstore is not easy, and it's been more work than I even thought it would be, and I knew it was going to be a lot of work. But it's kind of exciting to have the opportunity to really make something that's ours from the beginning. Because historically, this is the safe place for women, specifically, and our recent swap over to being trans-inclusive space actually upsets some people. I try to have respect for the store's history, and I try to make space for people who remember it in a certain way while still holding firm that this is a store that has always tried to be progressive, and you can't be progressive if you're not progressing. We make decisions about small things, like, what books are face-out, what kinds of messages we are putting out there on social media, the kind of personality that we have, which is much stronger, a little bit more, sometimes abrasive, but always in service to the anger of the just. Sometimes, it makes me a little uncomfortable, which is good. It has certainly been my great privilege to work with people who hold me and the store accountable because it matters and say, "Hey, this voice, this space matters to people, "and we have a duty and a possibility to make the world a little bit better." I think it's a way to engage in our global conversation, and a way to learn to think critically about anything. Being a critical reader and being a reader, and a person in the book world means recognizing that stories have power. Stories have power to influence and affect people. "What does a book do in your life? "What does it change about you, and what can it change about the world?" I think are questions that I grapple with all the time because I do believe in the power of story and the power of books to change the world.