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

informative reflective

Feminism is not just for women. Rather if more people engaged with the work of black feminists, they would eventually see how this practice doesn’t just have the potential to save women, it could save all of us. But therein lies the dilemma because historically listening to black women is not par the course. Erasure, silence, and anti-black rhetoric  are common tactics that, for lack of better terms, continue to whoop our ass as collectives that allegedly have a common goal of liberation. 

How We Get Free highlights the CRC Statement which is almost like sacred text for black feminists because of the way it clearly defines identity politics while being explicitly anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, intersectional in its analysis of oppression. The interviews with members of the CRC statement and co-founder of BLM organization felt personable and emphasize how simply being in conversation with one another about our experiences as marginalized people is essential to this work.  

If black women were free, then everyone would be as our liberation necessitates the   annihilating of any all systems and vehicle of oppression such as capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy. Our struggles are intricately woven together, but confronting the ways they intersect is not sufficient; we must have the common goal and a plan of how to combat our common enemy.