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Circolo della Rosa |
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La Libreria delle donne (The Women's Bookshop) opened in 1975, originally
at its address of Via Dogana 2, Milan, from where it later moved to Via Pietro Calvi 29. At the same address, in adjacent rooms, the Circolo della Rosa
(Rose Club) was also founded. La Libreria delle donne is a complexe political entity always in motion: it produces its own publications own publications and a quarterly magazine (Via Dogana), organises meetings and political discussions, shows films, manages a website, owns a stock of rare and out-of-print texts and is a meeting place for a great many women and also men. Naturally, it sells books, including by post. Above all, however, it is the original place of the practice of relations. The organisation itself is extremely minimal. The most important things are invented, decided on and changed through direct relationships and not by voting. Some give a lot of their time, others less. Some count more, other less. It is a living entity whose permanent members include more than forty women. During its very first years it was necessary to create a place which would give emphasis to the thoughts and writings of women. This need gave rise to a Feminist enterprise which does not claim equality but, on the contrary, believes that women are different. We cherish this belief, we cultivate it through the practice of relationships and through dedication to poetry, literature and philosophy. For this reason, even when women's literature began to be more widely circulated, the Bookshop continued to thrive. Today, it boasts over 3000 women authors and a total number of works exceeding 10,000 titles. It also owns a fund of rare, out-of-print texts (if we were legally able we would make many photocopies of these rare books ;-)). Many of these texts have become part of our daily lives, helping us to tell our own stories and those of other women - or so it would appear from our discussions, and have helped us enter into a fruitful exchange with our customers, both women and men alike. Other works we have contributed to writing ourselves - individually, more often together. The Bookshop, in fact, is a place of discussion or, better still, it is essentially a political place, as we understand politics. It has nothing to do with institutions, political parties or homogeneous groups. We call it the politics of beginning with ourselves; it is born of each one's reflection of her own personal experience, from being together in a women's business but also in the world, and it is based on relationships. Yet in what we are there is something that cannot be written anywhere, something that cannot be expressed in words, because it has to be experienced, lived. What we write here, therefore, does not express the richness of what we live. This is partly why we created the website. We we know that the richness of personal experience far exceeds all possible representation...
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