Anna Ferrara Paperbacks Now Available At GinGin Store

You can now buy my books in paperback at GinGin Store in Taipei!

This is really cool because GinGin and Taiwan, of which Taipei is capital, are sort of heros of the LGBT community in Asia. You might already know that in May 2017, Taiwan became the first and only country in Asia to allow same-sex marriage but what you probably don’t know is that GinGin Store began almost 2 decades before that, while discriminatory incidents were still occurring against gay men in public establishments, because its founding team wanted to give LGBT individuals in Taiwan a place where they could feel welcome during daylight hours. Before it came into being, gays could only hang out in bars and parks at night and nobody talked about lesbians.

GinGin was the first LGBT-themed store in the Chinese region, the first to sell LGBT books in the region and the first to bring an LGBT presence into view of Taiwan’s conservative society with its large, open glass windows (according to its website’s About page). It had its share of struggles of course. In 2005, 6 years after it started, GinGin had 500 copies of gay magazines confiscated by the police on the grounds that they were ‘indecent materials’. It had to spend the next 2 years fighting court battles and also had its walls painted with graffiti after a foreign teacher from a Taiwanese-American Christian school incited his students to attack it. Fortunately, GinGin survived and is still open for business and popular today. It also serves as a sort of community centre for the LGBT community in Taipei and communicates with the media about LGBT issues when they arise.

To put things into perspective, do remember there are 48 countries (4 billion people) in Asia today, many of which punish homosexual activity with the death penalty, 10-100 ’lashes’, stoning, whipping, flogging, castration, torture, fines or imprisonment that could span months to life.

Taiwan, made of 23 million people (only 0.5% of the population in Asia), is the only Asian country that has allowed same-sex marriage within its borders through constitutional interpretation, ever.

And since I don’t know of any other LGBT-specific bookstore in Asia other than GinGin (and I’m not from Taiwan nor have I ever lived there, though I have visited the country a couple of times for the food, music and lesbian party), I can’t help but think GinGin might have had something to do with it.

So thanks Tracy, for making this possible!

GinGin’ Store’s address, in case you want to check them out or buy LGBT books, magazines, videos or sex toys:
1F, No.8, Alley 8, Lane 210, Sect. 3, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei 100, Taiwan