You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

or you are the only animal,

who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Good afternoon and welcome to KCRW Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblatt, your bookworm, and I'm here today with three guests from Los Angeles.

The first two will be Adele Wallace and Simone Wallace, the co-owners of Sisterhood Bookstore

in Westwood, and our second guest

will be Kendall Haley, whose book, the day I became an autodidact, has just been published

in paperback by Delta.

I'm here in the studio with Adele and Simone of Sisterhood Books. Tell me, when did the bookstore open?

Well, we first opened our doors in November of 1972, so that means 16 years ago. That will be 17

this coming November. That's correct. Right.

How did the decision to start a bookstore of specifically women's books come to you?

Where did it start?

Where had you been at that time?

Adele and I, who are the current owners of the store, are also two of the three founders. And she and I were working together at that time at one of the store are also two of the three founders.

And she and I were working together at that time at one of the very first women's centers of Los Angeles, which was the Crenshaw Women's Center.

And as part of our political work, we started to collect a lot of the books, pamphlets,

and papers that were coming out of the women's movement

from across the country and some magazines and papers also. We had them in a little room,

we had a little metal box, and anybody who wanted to buy anything, you know, put their

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