BLUE HERON BOOKS & ZINES

Blue Heron Books and Zines is a community bookstore and zine distributor dedicated to sharing anarchist, anti-authoritarian, and anti-colonial literature. By signing up for a Blue Heron membership ($5 or pay what you can) you can borrow any of the books in our collection.

Blue Heron operates the Free Store, which is basically a thrift store where clothing, household goods, tools, craft supplies, and other donated items are available for anyone to take at no cost.

We are also the happy hosts to The Herb Shelf, initiated and run by local herbalists. They provide (for free!) a variety of dried herbs (calendula, chamomile, elderflower, lemon balm, burdock root, etc.) and information on how to use them in teas, tinctures, steams, and more. 

BHBZ REVIEW_serano
BHBZ_Feminism For REAL
Black, southern magical realism about sharp and extremely insightful time travelling teenagers navigating family, school, relationships of all kinds and the ever-present threat of white racial terror. Hard to put down. Beautifully written.
The Marrow Theives (Cherie Dimaline) is a near-future Indigenous YA dystopian novel. It conjures up scary-relevant colonial administrators for the story's villains. Brilliant characters. Made me cry.
Jackie Wang's Carceral Capitalist is one of the most prescient overviews of the interlocking matrix of law enforcement, prison, and finance capitalism. Wang outlines the rise of new debtors prisons and the beginning of an American system of permanent house-arrest perpetrated against poor and racialized peoples in an ongoing settler-colonial fashion.
The book is based on her PhD dissertation, which was driven by a passion ignited in her childhood when her own brother was sentenced to 40 years in prison in Florida. A must-read for anyone trying to understand the current carceral system and its destructive ambitions.
Image of 500 Years of Resistance by Gord Hill, with text overlaid, "#CANCELCANADA reading material"
Image of the book jacket description of 500 Years of Resistance by Gord Hill.
Pan-African Social Ecology by Modibo Kadalie is a great choice for folks looking for an "intro" text about anarchism, as well as those interested in Black, working class movements (in the U.S.), resistance to imperialist earth-killers, social ecology thought and movement work, and history "from below". It makes for an easy read because it's mostly comprised of Modibo Kadalie's speeches and conversations with Andrew Zonneveld, but also simply because Kadalie is speaking to everyday people instead of elitest academics. Rating: 10 out of 10 autonomous social movements
"One way to determine who is your ally is to look at how people conceptualize the movement. If they conceptualize the movement as a changing of attitudes, a change of individual consciousness, or are emphasizing individual heroes, then these people don't have the same vision that you have. Allies are people who look at these things as systemic and institutionalized, and are prepared to break the existing law--because the law is part of the array of mechanisms that we are struggling against. If they're just apologizing for the way things are and are putting limitations on your struggle, you can draw the line right there."
  • Address: 75 Queen street, Kingston, ON
  • Hours: Mondays 3:00PM - 7:00PM & Thursdays 5:00PM - 7:00pm