A Very Pandemic Celebration:
Independent Bookstore
Day 2021
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A Letter from Catherine Weller |
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“To walk into an indie bookstore is to walk into a world of discovery. The fruits of the products of humanity can be plucked from its shelves. Each store is different; each store is its own world. The books, diversity of thoughts and ideas, readings, events, and knowledge indie bookstores bring to their communities are well worth celebrating.”
I wrote those words for a previous newsletter in what now seems like a different era. It was only 2018 but oh my things have changed. Covid. Shutdowns. Black Lives Matter and social justice protests. Mask mandates. Vaccines. Through all of the chaos and questioning during the last year indie booksellers including Weller Book Works served their communities in new ways. We evolved to facilitate online sales and events. We expanded services to include the once novel and now normal curbside pickup. We created safety and cleaning protocols. We published book lists for the ever changing zeitgeist of the times. We ached to see our readers in person, so we did whatever we could to continue to safely sell books to our people. And we were happy to because books and bookselling are in our blood.
Independent Bookstore Day (IBD) was postponed last year from early May to late August. It also moved from a deliberately in-store celebration to an entirely virtual one. This year’s IBD on April 24th is a hybrid. Our store is open if you’d like to visit us (masks still required) and peruse the unique IBD merch in person. But since it’s a bit soon to gather in crowds, all our celebrations will be online. Please visit the events page on our website and Facebook page for more information. Wellerbookworks.com is also the place to land for LibroFM’s generous offer to gift an audiobook to each Weller Book Works customer who spends $15 or more from April 24 to April 26, either in store or on our website.
IBD merch will also be for sale on our website beginning on Bookstore Day. This year’s offerings at Weller Book Works include an exclusive, signed edition of Jeff Vandermeer’s Hummingbird Salamander, a print from Rio Cortez’s picture book The ABCs of Black History, an exclusive edition of Stephen King and Joe Hill’s In the Tall Grass, and a bumper sticker from Frederick Joseph’s The Black Friend.
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“Sold!” You say. “Count me in!” You state. Thank you. The wild, wooly, and wonderful world of independent bookselling will be celebrated Saturday, April 24th. It wouldn’t be the same without you. |
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Acquisitions in Rare Books
By Tony Weller
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Mark Hofmann was a regular but quiet visitor of Sam Weller’s Books, our Main Street predecessor. When he interacted, it was mostly with Sam.
The day of the bombings, I was in a college class. On October 15, 1985 I was in my second year of art school and working at the bookstore part-time. Word of the bombings drifted into classes but until I went to the bookstore later that day, I didn’t know enough details to understand how close to our concerns the violence might be. The FBI contacted my father, Sam, and urged him to avoid habitual places and go to an undisclosed location. Sam was rather tough and also macho and did not heed their advice. And after all, he was not entangled in Mark Hofmann’s most extreme activities.
Like many, I believed Mark was the third victim when he and his car were detonated the following day.
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I wish our records revealed what Hofmann bought from our bookstore three weeks before the bombings. His check was twice rejected by the bank, the second time on September 30th. Sam understood that Mark Hofmann had archival skills. His interest in historic items and frequent custom led Sam to trust him enough to ask Hofmann to give baths to, to clean, a couple of soiled Kirtland Notes the bookstore had acquired. I never learned how much pay or what trade they agreed on. But the notes would not be returned to us until 1991. They had been in Hofmann’s car with him when he blew himself up by the Deseret Gym. The notes had been handed to Hofmann in a Sam Weller’s Books envelope that was burned and charred but the Kirtland Notes survived the explosion with only minor burns. They have become part of our history and are framed with the burned envelope and a brief description.
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Some years later, and several into Sam’s retirement, I found a very good looking Oath of a Freeman in an envelope in a filing cabinet. Never had I heard of a Weller connection in that bold forgery. We certainly weren’t in a position to buy a 1.5 million dollar document. Call it good fortune. So I called my dad, Sam, to ask him whence this unlikely Oath of a Freeman came. We were both frustrated that he couldn’t remember. But the mind is a marvelous and strange thing. Half a year later he remembered. His friend, fellow book dealer and cartography expert Ken Nebenzhal had somehow made a few copies of Hofmann’s forgery on old paper and sent, Ken later told me, three to old friends.
In Word from Wellers, I usually present a new acquisition from the Rare Book Department. This issue we present The Mark Hofmann Interviews from the Office of the Salt Lake County Attorney. It contains over 500 pages of interviews conducted by Dr. Ronald Vern Jackson and copies of documents of interest. This is the 4th printing of the Interviews. $200
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Our March & April Best Weller Pick:
Once I Was You by Maria Hinojosa
Receive 20% off this title
when you buy through April!
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Maria Hinojosa
9781982128654
Atria Books
Hardcover $28.00
I tend to be a sensitive person but even so, it’s not often I find myself openly sobbing while reading a memoir. If you’re alive in the United States, the opening scene in Once I Was You won’t be a surprise, but it will grab your heart. Reporter Maria Hinojosa’s interaction at the McAllen airport in Texas with immigrant children who have been separated from their parents by the U.S. government puts the children’s fear and confusion--the utter cruelty--right in front of you, demanding you look. Hinojosa wrote the introduction as a letter to one of the children she spoke to. She tells the 10-year-old girl from the airport, “I see you, because once I was you.”
Hinojosa immigrated to Chicago as a baby. Her family left Mexico so her dad could take a job as a professor and researcher at the University of Chicago. The story of her family’s journey across the border includes a customs agent who tried to separate baby Maria from her mother because of a small rash on her arm. This was 1962.
In telling her own story, Hinojosa tells the story of immigration in the United States. She doesn’t limit the story to immigration from Latin America, but contextualizes each wave of immigration in the American story. American immigration policy has always been--and continues to be--about maintaining a “white” society. While what defines whiteness has shifted over time (Italian and Polish immigrants were not always considered white in America), the ideal of keeping the “other” out has stayed the same, despite that white America inhabits land stolen from Indigenous people.
Of her own story, Hinojosa describes her experiences breaking into news as a Latina--often as the first or only Latinx person in the newsroom--and her personal heartaches and joys. Once I Was You includes stories behind her reporting such as Hinojosa living in New York City and covering 9/11, traveling to Louisiana to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and her 2011 PBS Frontline documentary Lost in Detention in which she reports the living conditions for immigrants in detention centers.
Throughout her recollections Hinojosa describes policy changes and how they affect immigrants, as well as cultural and historic moments at state and national levels. She beautifully connects her own life and reporting career to immigration in the United States.
Once I Was You is essential reading because understanding immigration policy and history in the United States is necessary for understanding America itself. The cruelty of detention and anti-immigrant policies; the beauty and greatness immigrants bring to this country; all of it forms the structural threads in the fabric of American history, culture, and everyday life.
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Malevolent Republic: A Conversation with K.S. Komireddi |
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From Back of Beyond to Instagram: A Century of Utah's National Parks (A Conversation with Stephen Trimble and Frederick Swanson) |
We're delighted to announce a virtual conversation with Stephen Trimble (editor of The Capitol Reef Reader) and Frederick Swanson (author of Wonders of Sand and Stone: A History of Utah's National Parks and Monuments). Join us on our YouTube channel Wednesday, April 14th at 7 PM MST to catch the livestream!
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Join us virtually and in-store for Independent Bookstore Day! Is it the best day of the year? We think it might be.
You can purchase IBD merch online beginning the 24th as well as at the store.
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Meaning in the Multiverse: A Conversation with Justin Harnish |
More information to come! Keep an eye on our website and social media pages for updates on this event.
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Wednesdays at 6 p.m.
Join Catherine and the crafters of Weller Book Works on Zoom for 40 minutes of casual bookish conversation and snacks. All crafts and crafters are welcome. BYOB.
Lit Knit is held the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays monthly.
Email catherine@wellerbookworks.com for an invitation to attend.
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By torrin a. greathouse
Milkweed Editions
Paperback $16.00
Reviewed by Salem
9781571315274
*Content Warning*: Discussion of Ableism, Transphobia, Abuse, and Homophobic Slurs
Trying to pin down what this poetry collection is "about" feels hopelessly reductive, and doesn't do justice to the layered themes at play. greathouse touches on ableism, transphobia, body dysphoria, and abuse, underpinning how each intersects with and influences the other. She skillfully translates for the reader the reality of occupying a body you've been taught to hate through the presentation of disquieting language and circumstance that will be painfully familiar to some. This is sometimes expressed through strangers, as in, "Litany of Ordinary Violence", which walks the reader through street harassment, but more often, is voiced by her own family members in callous observations. "That's So Lame" examines casual ableism. In it, she recalls: 'My dad used to tell me this old riddle: What / value is there in a lame horse that cannot gallop? / A bullet & whatever a butcher can make of it.’ Equally striking is the closing line to "When My Brother Makes a Joke About Trans Panic": 'I cannot see this / as just a joke not from the boy who still calls me / brother. Who could read my obituary out loud / & still hear a punchline.'
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Though I love her work for its confessional delivery and careful dissection of difficult themes, my favorite thing about this collection is her creative use of page space. Poetry as a visual medium is on full display here in startling and inventive ways. One of the strongest poems in this collection, “On Using the Wo l Men’s Bathroom,” explores the apprehension and real risk many trans people face when deciding which public restroom to use. A verse each is dedicated to the Men’s and Women’s room, presented in two columns side by side. The last line rests in the middle: “both doors open / to a narrative ending in blood.” |
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My favorite poems are redactions of greathouse’s own work, presented directly below the source. This forces an immediate reinterpretation of the previous lines, and showcases greathouse’s masterful ability to condense her work into the fewest words possible. My favorite poem in the entire collection is, “The Queer Trans Girl Writes Her Estranged Mother a Letter About the Word Faggot & It Is the First Word to Burn,” a searing analysis of the word “faggot” as slur/reclaimed identity/bundle of sticks. It is printed first in its entirety as a prose poem, and followed by two redactions, each shorter than the last. The final redaction is my favorite, and skillfully compresses the entire poem into a single thought: “You said you wanted / a daughter till you had one / me your child of ash.”
As much as I could write about this book, its artistry and merit is best expressed through greathouse’s own delivery. To really get a feel for her voice and how she plays with language and structure, it simply must be read. Like many poetry books, this is a slim volume that can be read in a single sitting, but don’t let that fool you. The depth and mastery of her work warrants several visitations, and greatly rewards the reader with each return.
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By Charles Yu
Vintage
Paperback $16.00
Reviewed by Tamsen
9780307948472
Int. Golden Palace
Ever since you were a boy, you’ve dreamt of being
Kung Fu Guy.
You are not Kung Fu Guy.
You are currently Background Oriental Male, but
you’ve been practicing.
Maybe tomorrow will be the day.
And so begins Interior Chinatown, a complex and engaging book about stereotypes and roles--the roles we fill, the roles that change, and the roles other people force upon us.
Before you even begin the story, upon opening the book you are immediately struck by the format--this isn’t going to be a regular book. Interior Chinatown looks like a movie or TV script, fitting for the book’s emphasis on roles.
The literary importance of this book--with its unique format and stellar character development among the emotional heft of a son and father navigating those roles--can’t be denied. And while I read this before the horrifying hate crimes in Atlanta occurred, the timing is apropos.
Interior Chinatown doesn’t--and shouldn’t--exist simply to explain to non-Asian people the stereotypes Asians in the United States experience. However, the stereotypes explored in this book are part of the important discussion on racism and xenophobia in this country. The way Asians of varied and dynamic roots have been consolidated into just a few boiler-plate roles in movies and TV is inexcusable.
In Interior Chinatown, Willis Wu longs to become Kung Fu Guy, the most coveted role he can imagine. As he gets closer and closer to filling that role, he starts to find it comes with a price and might not be what he thought it would be.
Bruce Lee is the classic cinematic Chinese hero in film, and yet not even he is safe from the white gaze. In Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 hit “Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood,” one scene reduces Lee’s personhood and contributions to film and culture to racist caricature--Lee is Kung Fu Guy and only Kung Fu Guy, and unable to withstand the power of white American manhood.
Tarantino’s depiction of Bruce Lee is only one among the deluge of racist portrayals of Asians in pop culture. And in the context of that racist tradition and the recent hate crimes, Charles Yu’s exploration of stereotypes and changing roles couldn’t be more timely.
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April is National Poetry Month!
Come in and check out our poetry nook.
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Avoiding crowds? Shop online or give us a call! |
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We can also ship or facilitate curbside pickup.
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Phone orders: give us a call at 801-328-2586 |
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Thank you for your support
We're here because of you!
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While Utah's mask mandate ends April 10, the mask mandate at Weller Book Works does not. Staff and customers will be required to wear masks at least until all staff are fully vaccinated, and possibly longer. We will keep you updated on further Covid-related developments for our store. For customers who don't want to wear masks, we continue to welcome online and phone orders for shipping and curbside pickup.
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Thank you for supporting your local, independent bookstore! |
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Store hours: Monday-Saturday, 11 AM-7 PM | Sunday, 12 PM-5 PM
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