A review by washed_guapi_lee
How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

5.0

You probably know Keeanga Taylor for her contributions to the 13th documentary. She has also written extensively about BLM, voter suppression, and national politics. Keenaga is one of our most brilliant activist-scholars. Here, she creates a primary document through oral histories of the Combahee River Collective, which I first learned about through Robin DG Kelley's Freedom Dreams, back in 2002. Taylor interviews Beverly and Barbara Smith, and Demita Frazier, the lead members of Combahee, and they all individually paint this inspiring portrait of Black liberation struggle from the perspective of radical Black Lesbian Feminism across three decades. Their threads connect to SNCC, CORE, The Panthers, the Anti-Vietnam War Movement, Marxism, college education & student activism, and Audre Lorde. All three are also very clear about while Kimberly should get love for coining the term "intersectionality," the concept of interlocking systems of oppression comes from them. Their manifesto from 1979, which Taylor reprints here, only makes that evident. Taylor ends the book by interviewing Alicia Garza, which if you have been active in organizing in any capacity over the past 15-20 yrs will speak to you directly. READ THIS BOOK. At the nexus of Black liberation struggles, with the most radical analysis, perspective, and labor, has always been Black Lesbian Women.