Libreria delle Donne

The Libreria delle Donne has existed since 1975. From its historical location in Via Dogana 2, it moved to Via Pietro Calvi 29, Milan. The Libreria delle Donne is a composite political reality on the move: it has its own publications and an online magazine, Via Dogana, it organises meetings, political discussions, film screenings, has a fund of out-of-print and unobtainable texts, and is a meeting centre for many women and men too. Of course it sells books, also by mail. The organisation is very light, reduced to a minimum. The most important things are invented, decided and changed through direct relations, not by voting. It is a feminist enterprise that does not claim equality, but, on the contrary, says that the difference of women is there and we cherish it, cultivate it through the practice of relationships and through attention to poetry, literature, philosophy. The Bookshop is a place for discussion, or rather it is essentially a political place, the way we understand politics. Nothing to do with institutions, parties or homogenous groups. We call it politics of starting from oneself; it comes from reflecting on the experience each one has, from being together in a women's enterprise but also in the world, and it is based on relationships. But in what we are there is something that cannot be written anywhere, something that cannot be reduced to what can be expressed in words, because you have to be there to experience it. (2025)

Publications

• Le madri di tutte noi (Catalogo giallo) [The Mothers of Us All (Yellow Catalogue)], 1982. An anthology of female writers: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, the Brontës, Elsa Morante, Gertrude Stein, Anna Kavan, Ingeborg Bachmann, Virginia Woolf and Ivy Compton-Burnett.

• Libreria delle Donne di Milano, Non credere di avere dei diritti: la generazione della libertà femminile nell'idea e nelle vicende di un gruppo di donne, Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1987, 192 pp; repr., 2017, 192 pp. Recapitulates the decades on either side of the opening of the Libreria delle Donne, written as a collective history, an analysis and a weaving together of individual voices and tales. Publisher. [1] (Italian)
  • The Milan Women's Bookstore Collective, Sexual Difference: A Theory of Social-Symbolic Practice, intro. Teresa De Lauretis, Indiana University Press, 1990, 154 pp. Introductory essay. (English)
  • Librería de Mujeres de Milán, No creas tener derechos: la generación de la libertad femenina en las ideas y vivencias de un grupo de mujeres, Madrid: Horas y HORAS, 1991, 204 pp; 2nd ed., rev., 2004, 244 pp. (Spanish)
  • Libreria delle Donne, Wie weibliche Freiheit entsteht: eine neue politische Praxis, trans. Traudel Sattler, Berlin: Orlanda Freuenverlag, 1991, 188 pp; repr., 1999. [2] (German)
  • Libraire des Femmes de Milan, Ne crois pas avoir de droits: la génération de la liberté féminine à travers les idées et les aventures d'un groupe de femmes, postf. Teresa De Lauretis, Bordeaux: Éditions la Tempête, 2019, 263 pp. Publisher. (French)

About Libreria delle Donne

• Alex Martinis Roe, To Become Two: Propositions for Feminist Collective Practice, Berlin: Archive Books, with Bolzano: ar/ge kunst, Utrecht: Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory, Amsterdam: If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, and London: The Showroom, 2018. Author. Publisher. (English)

• Barbara Casavecchia, "Words into Action: The story of the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective", ArtReview, Apr 2018. [3] (English)

• Andrea Hajek, "A Room of One"s Own. Feminist Intersections between Space, Women’s Writing and Radical Bookselling in Milan (1968–1986)", Italian Studies 73:1, 2018, pp 81–97. DOI. (English)

• Margarita Diaz, "Finding Italy’s feminist history at Milan’s Libreria delle donne", Italy Segreta, Sep 2023. [4] (English)

Films

• A story from Circolo della rosa, dir. Alex Martinis Roe, 2014, 8 min. [5]

• La Libreria delle Donne – Una storia che continua, dir. Sabina Fedeli, 2016, 38 min. [6]

Links

• Website