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avoryfaucette's review
5.0
As a white feminist, I found this anthology particularly revelatory in the ways that it speaks to WOC experience in white-dominated feminist communities. Many of the authors focus on dual experiences with family and/or country of origin and mostly white US women's studies departments. This collection uses personal narrative to communicate the political realities of these experiences and hold white women accountable, while also providing something WOC of diverse backgrounds can relate to. Strong themes include motherhood, immigrant experience, and WOC feminism.
murphykat's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
4.0
An exercise in learning to listen without feeling the need to form a rebuttal. This book contains a collection of stories from various viewpoints on feminism, the lack of intersectionality, and the every day pains of living in the modern era while having to try to navigate your various identities and society’s views of you. Would highly recommend the audiobook version.
elizabeth_anne_elizabeth's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
pramilaaaa's review
4.0
While I did find some essays boring or unrelatable, I'm glad I read it. I loved essays where the writers had written about women in their lives teaching them early on, indirectly, to be staunch feminists through their every day actions. Feeling terribly inarticulate so I will just say you need to give this book a chance. Definitely an eye opener!
indielitttttt's review
5.0
This was such a good read! It’s a must read for anyone who considered themself a feminist in any sense of the word. The book of essays is split into four distinct sections on community, mothers/daughters, transformations, and standing up for oneself. Each essay details how Western feminism (read white feminism) fails women of color all too often. How white feminism leaves so many people out despite the fact that true feminism should be about bringing people in. While all sections were beautiful, I was most compelled by the essays in the last section, with my favorites being those by Darice Jones, Pandora Leong, Sirena Riley, and shani jamila.
4.5/5⭐️
4.5/5⭐️
ctgarcialeon's review against another edition
5.0
Oh, how much I needed this book. It is nourishment for the soul for women of color. It has a wonderful mix of scholarly work and personal essays. Although some essays are better written than others, all of them speak to the diversity of issues that effect women of color. I related so much to essays like Dutiful Hijas: Dependency, Power, and Guilt by Erica Gonzalez Martinez, and learned so much from others, like It's Not an Oxymoron: The Search for an Arab Feminism by Susan Muaddi Darraj. Others made me pause and do some deep soul searching, like Organizing 101: A Mixed Race Feminist in Movements for Social Justice by Lisa Weiner Mahfuz. The entire collection brings home the fact that a true feminism must speak to a greater variety of issues and experiences than (for lack of a better term) mainstream feminism. Although some of the essays are a decade (or more) old, they still hit home. This is a must read for anyone who wants to learn about and understand the evolution of women of color feminism.
janeneal's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
This is a great collection of feminist essays from a varied group of women from many different cultural, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
There was a running theme of how so much of feminist rhetoric and activism is often only seen through the lens of and applied to affluent white women. Some of the stories recounted within academia were particularly striking, demonstrating how very white a lot of the gender studies and feminist classes really are. It's not surprising, but it definitely hit harder while I read through the experiences of Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous women.
I've been thinking a lot about the corporation-approved white feminism that appears in so many facets of life now, from social media influencers to clothing sold at Target to the Cruella teaser painting Cruella as a woman held back by misogyny (when she literally wanted to kill puppies...). Comedians, particularly women, facing blowback for making fun of Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Melania Trump, not for their appearance, but for their literal complicity with fascism.
I guess what I really mean to say is it always has been but it is especially important now to make sure that marginalized voices are being raised up and heard. White women especially need to examine how we've been participating in this shallow replication of Girl Power without any kind of sustaining action or support for people who need it most.
I used to shake my head when a celebrity or someone would say, "I'm not a feminist," but the essays in this show how that is such an unimportant question. Many spoke of their mothers who had never identified as a feminist, but did the most they could for their children by working multiple jobs or going to school or a myriad of other things that weren't necessarily identified as being "FEMINIST." It really highlighted the difference between rhetoric/theory and the practical world, like how #TimesUp is not actually doing anything for women living in poverty or low-income jobs that have to deal with sexual harassment and can't just walk away.
This is not super coherent but a lot of these things have been percolating in my brain for a while. This collection helped identify and give voice to some of those thoughts and feelings I have been having in regard to everything that has been ramping up lately. I very much recommend this collection and think it's a must for everyone to read.
There was a running theme of how so much of feminist rhetoric and activism is often only seen through the lens of and applied to affluent white women. Some of the stories recounted within academia were particularly striking, demonstrating how very white a lot of the gender studies and feminist classes really are. It's not surprising, but it definitely hit harder while I read through the experiences of Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous women.
I've been thinking a lot about the corporation-approved white feminism that appears in so many facets of life now, from social media influencers to clothing sold at Target to the Cruella teaser painting Cruella as a woman held back by misogyny (when she literally wanted to kill puppies...). Comedians, particularly women, facing blowback for making fun of Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Melania Trump, not for their appearance, but for their literal complicity with fascism.
I guess what I really mean to say is it always has been but it is especially important now to make sure that marginalized voices are being raised up and heard. White women especially need to examine how we've been participating in this shallow replication of Girl Power without any kind of sustaining action or support for people who need it most.
I used to shake my head when a celebrity or someone would say, "I'm not a feminist," but the essays in this show how that is such an unimportant question. Many spoke of their mothers who had never identified as a feminist, but did the most they could for their children by working multiple jobs or going to school or a myriad of other things that weren't necessarily identified as being "FEMINIST." It really highlighted the difference between rhetoric/theory and the practical world, like how #TimesUp is not actually doing anything for women living in poverty or low-income jobs that have to deal with sexual harassment and can't just walk away.
This is not super coherent but a lot of these things have been percolating in my brain for a while. This collection helped identify and give voice to some of those thoughts and feelings I have been having in regard to everything that has been ramping up lately. I very much recommend this collection and think it's a must for everyone to read.
gwhited99's review against another edition
5.0
I bought this book when the second edition came out last year but only picked it up now because of the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. This book is a fantastic read for those who want to learn more about the importance of intersectionality in feminism. These powerful women of color emphasize that race, gender, and sexuality cannot be separated through short essays with very accessible language. While I would encourage everyone to read this book for themselves, here are a few of my favorite quotes:
From "Resisting Sterilization & Embracing Trans Motherhood" by Luna Merbruja:
"I didn't defend my stances, but I stand by the fact that trans women have motherhoods that are different from cis motherhoods. Regardless of whether a trans woman identifies as 'pregnant' with sperm, we have reproductive issues. If we're being murdered at alarming rates, how can we live to be mothers? If we're being sterilized by the state, why aren't more people outraged and teaching trans people the truth about their bodies? Why aren't there more organized efforts to make sperm banking and egg freezing accessible for trans people?" (pg 49)
From "Black Feminism in Everyday Life" by Siobhan Brooks:
"Suffering and systematic abuse in communities of color was so normalized. We often didn't even know we were oppressed. Some of us thought suffering was just a part of being Black." (pg 111)
"Women's studies classes do not have to be a struggle for power between white women and women of color, yet that is often what they are because of white women's racism. White women must understand that the anger some of color express in and outside of the classroom toward them is not an issue of 'hurt feelings' or 'misunderstandings.' To reduce our experience of that racism to 'misunderstandings' is both racist and reductionist." (pg 118)
From "Bring Us Back into the Dance" by Kahente Horn-Miller:
"It is worth remembering that the role of Haudenosaunee women did not automatically change after contact. Women continued to do the same things. We had a well-defined and important function in our culture. It is becoming more apparent to all of us that the church and the colonial state worked together to weaken indigenous societies. These colonizing institutions realized that our status had to be changed if they were to break our traditional worldview and teach us 'civilized' European ways." (pg 130)
From "Becoming an Abortion Doula" by Sandra Kumwong:
"Pro-choice is a language that never sits well with me, because many people don't feel as if it's their choice-- Mom, was it really yours? Choice assumes that a person has the autonomy to make a decision. This is not the case for those who have been subjected to systematic dehumanization and oppression." (pg 166)
From "Heartbroken: Women of Color Feminism and the Third Wave" by Recebba Hurdis:
"Feminism has been indoctrinated into the academy through the discipline of women's studies. It has moved out of the social and political spaces from where it emerged. Women's studies have collapsed the diversity that was part of the feminist movement into a discipline that has become a homogeneous generality." (pg 281)
From "The Black Beauty Myth" by Sirena J. Riley:
"As much as we get praised for loving our full bodies, many young white women would rather be dead than wear a size 14. They nod their heads and say how great it is that we black women can embrace our curves, but they don't want to look like us. They don't adopt our presumably more generous beauty ideals. ... I've never heard a white woman say that she's going to take her cue from a black woman and gain a few pounds, however. In a way it is patronizing, because they're basically saying 'It's okay for you to be fat, but not me. You're black. You're different.'" (pg 344)
From "Can I get a Witness? Testimony from a Hip-Hop Feminist" by Shani Jamila:
"The paradox of the Black middle class as I experienced it is that we are simultaneously affirmed and erased: tokenized and celebrated as one of the few 'achievers' of our race, but set apart from other Black folks by our economic success. It is the classic divide-and-conquer technique regularly employed in oppressive structures: in this case, saying that Black people are pathological- but you somehow escaped the genetic curse, so you must be 'different.'" (pg 349)
From "Resisting Sterilization & Embracing Trans Motherhood" by Luna Merbruja:
"I didn't defend my stances, but I stand by the fact that trans women have motherhoods that are different from cis motherhoods. Regardless of whether a trans woman identifies as 'pregnant' with sperm, we have reproductive issues. If we're being murdered at alarming rates, how can we live to be mothers? If we're being sterilized by the state, why aren't more people outraged and teaching trans people the truth about their bodies? Why aren't there more organized efforts to make sperm banking and egg freezing accessible for trans people?" (pg 49)
From "Black Feminism in Everyday Life" by Siobhan Brooks:
"Suffering and systematic abuse in communities of color was so normalized. We often didn't even know we were oppressed. Some of us thought suffering was just a part of being Black." (pg 111)
"Women's studies classes do not have to be a struggle for power between white women and women of color, yet that is often what they are because of white women's racism. White women must understand that the anger some of color express in and outside of the classroom toward them is not an issue of 'hurt feelings' or 'misunderstandings.' To reduce our experience of that racism to 'misunderstandings' is both racist and reductionist." (pg 118)
From "Bring Us Back into the Dance" by Kahente Horn-Miller:
"It is worth remembering that the role of Haudenosaunee women did not automatically change after contact. Women continued to do the same things. We had a well-defined and important function in our culture. It is becoming more apparent to all of us that the church and the colonial state worked together to weaken indigenous societies. These colonizing institutions realized that our status had to be changed if they were to break our traditional worldview and teach us 'civilized' European ways." (pg 130)
From "Becoming an Abortion Doula" by Sandra Kumwong:
"Pro-choice is a language that never sits well with me, because many people don't feel as if it's their choice-- Mom, was it really yours? Choice assumes that a person has the autonomy to make a decision. This is not the case for those who have been subjected to systematic dehumanization and oppression." (pg 166)
From "Heartbroken: Women of Color Feminism and the Third Wave" by Recebba Hurdis:
"Feminism has been indoctrinated into the academy through the discipline of women's studies. It has moved out of the social and political spaces from where it emerged. Women's studies have collapsed the diversity that was part of the feminist movement into a discipline that has become a homogeneous generality." (pg 281)
From "The Black Beauty Myth" by Sirena J. Riley:
"As much as we get praised for loving our full bodies, many young white women would rather be dead than wear a size 14. They nod their heads and say how great it is that we black women can embrace our curves, but they don't want to look like us. They don't adopt our presumably more generous beauty ideals. ... I've never heard a white woman say that she's going to take her cue from a black woman and gain a few pounds, however. In a way it is patronizing, because they're basically saying 'It's okay for you to be fat, but not me. You're black. You're different.'" (pg 344)
From "Can I get a Witness? Testimony from a Hip-Hop Feminist" by Shani Jamila:
"The paradox of the Black middle class as I experienced it is that we are simultaneously affirmed and erased: tokenized and celebrated as one of the few 'achievers' of our race, but set apart from other Black folks by our economic success. It is the classic divide-and-conquer technique regularly employed in oppressive structures: in this case, saying that Black people are pathological- but you somehow escaped the genetic curse, so you must be 'different.'" (pg 349)