Bookstore Will Hand Out Free Copies Of 'We Should All Be Feminists' On Inauguration Day

On the occasion of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, an Oregon bookstore is celebrating “new beginnings and new challenges” the best way it knows how: by giving away free copies of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists.

Broadway Books, a Portland, Oregon-based bookstore, announced in its January newsletter that it will distribute copies of the 2014 book/essay on Jan. 20 ― one per customer, while supplies last. Why? Because the owners of the store want to “kick off the new year by celebrating the power of women to do great things.”

“As the owners of a bookstore founded by women, and still women-owned after almost 25 years, we appreciate strong women, and we rejoice in the men who respectfully support and stand alongside them,” they wrote in the newsletter. Adding:

We chose Inauguration Day for this giveaway because when we inaugurate a new president and bring in a new administration it’s a time of new beginnings and new challenges, a chance to reflect on where we are as a country, where we want to go, and how we want to get there. We found the words of this international voice to be particularly inspiring and wanted to share them with our customers. We encourage you to come early to get a copy!

We Should All Be Feminists is based on a popular TEDx talk Adichie gave in 2012. “Some people ask: ‘Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?’” the Nigerian author writes in the essay. “Because that would be [...] a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women.”

The work is so influential that a Women’s Lobby wanted to give every 16-year-old in Sweden a copy and Beyoncé sampled the TEDx talk on “Flawless.”

Oregonian reporter Casey Parks alerted us to Broadway Books’ plans on Twitter. Kim Bissell, co-owner of Broadway Books, added her own take on the decision in the newsletter: “We believe that all our voices matter and hope to inspire our children to reach for their goals based on their desires and abilities and not their gender.”