Off of Main Street in Carbondale is White River Books, locally owned and operated by Izzy Stringham. The shop is colorful and brightly lit, there are plants in the window, and every wall is lined with full shelves. In the face of giant online retailers and an uncertain economy, White River Books is thriving. Stringham says she focuses on providing for the people in the valley, and lets the rest pass her by.
“ I have probably 50 to 60 regular customers who live in Carbondale. They’re so supportive. And that was like the most heartwarming thing about this whole business is that the town wanted it. I think the pandemic also really brought home the idea that if you don't support something, it will close, it will leave.”
Physical bookstores in the valley have come on and gone over the years. Book Binders in Basalt permanently closed last fall, and the last physical book store in Carbondale Novel Tea closed in 2010. Stringham says books are a tight business financially, publishers set prices and there’s no foolproof way to predict what people will buy. On top of doing all the cleaning, and crunching the numbers, Stringham orders all the books herself. She says that lately her readers have been loving fantasy, but the classics maintain a steady audience.
“ Some of these older books never lose their draw. I sell Philip k Dick books consistently. He is one of the most adopted sci-fi writers. He's been dead for years. Octavia Butler, she feels current even though she wrote them 30, 40, 50 years ago.”
And while fantasy and romance books can provide a fun escape from daily life, books are a political issue, and have recently been attracting a lot of attention from certain national groups like Moms for Liberty who want to pull titles they deem offensive from libraries and schools. And last year, a few Roaring Fork Valley residents challenged manga books in the Garfield County Libraries, citing explicit sexual material and asking they be moved away to a seperate room. Stringham says that censorship is as old as the printing press, and that banning a book is essentially challenging the reality it presents.
Stringham: “The Maya Angelou memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, has been banned repeatedly. This is her actual life story. And yes, she was raped and that's uncomfortable to read about. But you can't ban someone's experience and their telling of it. Eleven people in the US are responsible for 60% of the book challenges because it’s an issue that they really care about.”
Jones: “Who are these people?”
Stringham: “I don’t know. They have a lot of time on their hands, and they have a long list of books that they find offensive for whatever reasons. They have various reasons for various books, that the general public should not have access to is their argument, because they feel that they are inappropriate. And often protecting children is what's used as an example of why we need to get these out of here. But more often than not, it’s books about people's experiences that are not hetero, white and Christian.”
Behind us, facing the window is Maia Kobabe’s “Gender-Queer: A Memoir”, which according to the ALA was the most challenged title across the nation and Colorado in 2022, and fifth most banned for the 22-23 school year. The graphic novel recounts the author's experience with gender identity and sexuality from adolescence to adulthood. Moms for Liberty denounced this book and many others with LGBTQ+ themes, and according to Stringham, getting onto their running list isn’t hard.
“'Wicked' is on it, and these books usually are great books that have really nothing, you know, offensive in them, but maybe one scene or one page where something sexual is happening. or there's an LGBTQ event, I mean anything that could be considered under that umbrella. Like they're very vague and broad. Usually it's sex. Violence and language don't seem to really offend as much. But they'll find one thing and take it out of context and be like, this is offensive to me. And that's how some of those books get on those lists. They're reading it for something to offend, and books have a lot of life in them. A lot of life is offensive.”
It’s important to Stringham that reading is accessible, and enjoyable. She says that grandparents come in looking for Nancy Drew for their grandchildren, self-improvement books flow steadily out the door, and her customers are willing to wait a little longer for mountain shipping if it means shopping small.
“I want people to read books for the sake of reading a book, not to get a grade, not to improve themselves, not to learn. You will learn and you will embrace stuff without even knowing it”
