West Stacks Reading Room

Originally released in 1981, This Bridge Called My Back is a testimony to women of color feminism as it emerged in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Through personal essays, criticism, interviews, testimonials, poetry, and visual art, the collection explores, as coeditor Cherríe Moraga writes, "the complex confluence of identities--race, class, gender, and sexuality--systemic to women of color oppression and liberation."

A classic work of feminist scholarship, Ain't I a Woman has become a must-read for all those interested in the nature of black womanhood. Examining the impact of sexism on black women during slavery, the devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism among feminists, and the black woman's involvement with feminism, hooks attempts to move us beyond racist and sexist assumptions. The result is nothing short of groundbreaking, giving this book a critical place on every feminist scholar's bookshelf.

This book brings together activists, artists, and scholars of color to show how Black feminism and Afrofeminism are being practiced in Europe today, exploring their differing social positions in various countries, and exploring the ways in which they organize and mobilize to imagine a Black feminist Europe. Deeply aware that they are constructed as "others" living in a racialized and hierarchical continent, the contributors explore gender, class, sexuality, and legal status to show that they are both invisible--presumed to be absent from and irrelevant to European societies--and hyper-visible, assumed to be passive and sexualized, angry and irrational.

Transnational Black Feminism and Qualitative Research invites readers to consider what it means to conduct research within their own communities by interrogating local and global contexts of colonialism, race, and migration. The qualitative data at the centre of this book stem from a yearlong qualitative study of the lived experiences of Black women, who migrated to or spent a significant amount of time in the United States, as well as from the author's experiences as a Black German woman and former international student.

In Black Feminism Reimagined Jennifer C. Nash reframes black feminism's engagement with intersectionality, often celebrated as its primary intellectual and political contribution to feminist theory. Charting the institutional history and contemporary uses of intersectionality in the academy, Nash outlines how women's studies has both elevated intersectionality to the discipline's primary program-building initiative and cast intersectionality as a threat to feminism's coherence.

Making headlines when it was launched in 2015, Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley's undergraduate course Beyoncé Feminism, Rihanna Womanism has inspired students from all walks of life. In Finding Beyoncé, Tinsley now takes her rich observations beyond the classroom, using the blockbuster album and video Lemonade as a soundtrack for vital next-millennium narratives.

Black Internationalist Feminism examines how African American women writers affiliated themselves with the post-World War II Black Communist Left and developed a distinct strand of feminism. This vital yet largely overlooked feminist tradition built upon and critically retheorized the postwar Left's "nationalist internationalism," which connected the liberation of Blacks in the United States to the liberation of Third World nations and the worldwide proletariat.

In this personal, eloquently-argued essay--adapted from the much-admired TEDx talk of the same name--Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author's exploration of what it means to be a woman now--and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.

The timeless and essential anthology of Black Feminist thought--showing that Black women have always understood the need for feminism to be intersectional "In this pathbreaking collection of articles, Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall has taken us from the early 1830s to contemporary times. . . . She has refused to cut off contemporary African American women from the long line of sisters who have righteously struggled for the liberation of African American women from the dual oppressions of racism and sexism."

So what if it's true that Black women are mad as hell? They have the right to be. In the Black feminist tradition of Audre Lorde, Brittney Cooper reminds us that anger is a powerful source of energy that can give us the strength to keep on fighting.Far too often, Black women's anger has been caricatured into an ugly and destructive force that threatens the civility and social fabric of American democracy. But Cooper shows us that there is more to the story than that.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "The fights against hunger, homelessness, poverty, health disparities, poor schools, homophobia, transphobia, and domestic violence are feminist fights. Kendall offers a feminism rooted in the livelihood of everyday women." --Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of  How to Be an Antiracist, in The Atlantic "One of the most important books of the current moment."--Time."

A definitive selection of Audre Lorde's "intelligent, fierce, powerful, sensual, provocative, indelible" (Roxane Gay) prose and poetry, for a new generation of readers. Self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet" Audre Lorde is an unforgettable voice in twentieth-century literature, and one of the first to center the experiences of black, queer women.

Angela Davis's book is a complete revelation to me and a serious re-education.' Toni Morrison From the author of 'Women, Race & Class' comes a brilliant analysis of the blues which provides the historical, social and political contexts with which to reinterpret the performances and lyrics of Gertrude 'Ma' Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday as the articulation of a black, working- class, feminist consciousness at odds with mainstream American culture.'

Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Color Purple, Alice Walker's collection of essays ranging in topics from personal to political. "Thoughtful, intelligent, resonant musings." -- Kirkus Reviews In this, her first collection of nonfiction, Alice Walker speaks out as a black woman, writer, mother, and feminist. Among the thirty-six pieces are essays about other writers, accounts of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s, and a vivid memoir of a scarring childhood injury and her daughter's healing words.

More than fifty years of civil rights legislation and movements have not ended employment discrimination. This book reframes the discourse about the "glass ceiling" that women face with respect to workplace inequality. It explores the unspoken, societally held beliefs that underlie and engender workplace behaviour and failures of the law, policy, and human nature that contribute "panes" and ("pains") to the "glass ceiling."

A compelling study of a subtle and insidious form of racial inequality in American law and culture. Why does racial equality continue to elude African Americans even after the election of a black president? Liberals blame white racism while conservatives blame black behavior. Both define the race problem in socioeconomic terms, mainly citing jobs, education, and policing. Roy Brooks, a distinguished legal scholar, argues that the reality is more complex. He defines the race problem African Americans face today as a three-headed hydra involving socioeconomic, judicial, and cultural conditions.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The Other Black Girl is an electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing. Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she's thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers.

Understanding and appreciation between genders continues to be a work in progress. As people seek ways to make room for alternative perspectives, research-based solutions have become especially helpful. In this volume, seasoned professors tackle gender bias in the classroom by definingchallenges specific to the sciences and discussing ways to dismantle and confront biases. With solutions backed by research, this work will be useful for those working in all science and technology fields.

Despite a higher percentage of women entering various STEM fields, issues of discrimination and stereotyping continue to exist.

Presumed Incompetent is a pathbreaking account of the intersecting roles of race, gender, and class in the working lives of women faculty of color. Through personal narratives and qualitative empirical studies, more than 40 authors expose the daunting challenges faced by academic women of color as they navigate the often hostile terrain of higher education, including hiring, promotion, tenure, and relations with students, colleagues, and administrators.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. Unbound is one of those stories. From the founder and activist behind one of the largest movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the "me too" movement, Tarana Burke debuts a powerful memoir about her own journey to saying those two simple yet infinitely powerful words--me too--and how she brought empathy back to an entire generation in one of the largest cultural events in American history.

"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter," said Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford when she testified to congress in September 2018 about the men who victimized her. A year earlier, in October 2017, the hashtag #MeToo shone a light on the internalized, normalized sexual harassment and abuse that'd been ubiquitous for women for generations.

Powerfully written and theoretically grounded, Me Too, Feminist Theory, and Surviving Sexual Violence in the Academy collects a range of perspectives from sexual assault survivors with backgrounds in academia. The contributors in this collection connect their experiences of sexual violence to their research and work within the academy as well as their lives outside of it.

Rosa Parks was often described as a sweet and reticent elderly woman whose tired feet caused her to defy segregation on Montgomery’s city buses, and whose supposedly solitary, spontaneous act sparked the 1955 bus boycott that gave birth to the civil rights movement. The truth of who Rosa Parks was and what really lay beneath the 1955 boycott is far different from anything previously written.

New York Times bestseller. "An instant classic of investigative journalism...'All the President's Men' for the Me Too era." -- Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters who broke the news of Harvey Weinstein's sexual harassment and abuse for the New York Times, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, the thrilling untold story of their investigation and its consequences for the #MeToo movement.

African American Women face a variety of issues in the academy, community and society. The strength of this group often lies in sisterhood, as to many, the saying "you are your sister's keeper" rings true. This series addition addresses the concerns of African American Women in academia at the micro, mezzo and macro levels that can be used as the foundation for developing policies and intervention strategies to assist on their journey.

Originally published amid the generation-defining moments of the Black Power and Feminist movements, The Black Woman was one of the first book to give black American women a platform to voice their fears, hopes, angers and hard-won victories. With contributions from activists, academics, housewives, poets and authors, these 33 pieces consider subjects ranging from politics to motherhood. This book exhorts us to transcend the past in order to lay the groundwork for the future. A brave, passionate and revolutionary collection, timely reissued.

Too Heavy a Load celebrates this century's rich history of black women defending themselves, from Ida B. Wells to Anita Hill. Although most prominently a history of the century-long struggle against racism and male chauvinism, Deborah Gray White also movingly illuminates black women's painful struggle to hold their racial and gender identities intact while feeling the inexorable pull of the agendas of white women and black men.

In Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Saidiya Hartman examines the revolution of black intimate life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. Free love, common-law and transient marriages, serial partners, cohabitation outside of wedlock, queer relations, and single motherhood were among the sweeping changes that altered the character of everyday life and challenged traditional Victorian beliefs about courtship, love, and marriage.

A classic and controversial critique of sexism in the black nationalist movement, this "landmark black feminist text" is essential reading for those engaged in discussions about feminism and race politics (Ms.) Originally published in 1978, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman caused a storm of controversy. Michele Wallace blasted the masculine biases of the black politics that emerged from the sixties.

The story of freedom pivots on the choices black women made to retain control over their bodies and selves, their loved ones, and their futures. The story of freedom and all of its ambiguities begins with intimate acts steeped in power. It is shaped by the peculiar oppressions faced by African women and women of African descent.

From a leading voice on racial justice, an eye-opening account of growing up Black, Christian, and female that exposes how white America's love affair with "diversity" so often falls short of its ideals. "Austin Channing Brown introduces herself as a master memoirist. This book will break open hearts and minds."--Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed

A sequel of sorts to the author's masterful Women, Race And Class, this book examines the critical issues important to women: racism, violence, health, children, education and peace.

Invisibility persists throughout the Asian American story. On the one hand, xenophobia has long contributed to racism and discrimination toward Asian Americans. On the other hand, terms such as perpetual foreigner and honorific whites have been thrust upon Asian Americans, minimizing their plight with racism and erasing their experience as racial minorities. Even more indiscernible in America's racial landscape are Asian American women.

The second edition of this popular book adds important new research on how racial stereotyping is gendered and sexualized. New interviews show that Asian American men feel emasculated in America's male hierarchy. Women recount their experiences of being exoticized, subtly and otherwise, as sexual objects.

The star of Orange is the New Black and Jane the Virgin presents her personal story of the real plight of undocumented immigrants in this country Diane Guerrero, the television actress from the mega-hit Orange is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, was just fourteen years old on the day her parents were detained and deported while she was at school. Born in the U.S., Guerrero was able to remain in the country and continue her education, depending on the kindness of family friends who took her in and helped her build a life and a successful acting career for herself, without the support system of her family.

"A theory in the flesh means one where the physical realities of our lives all fuse to create a politic born of necessity," writes activist Cherrie L. Moraga. This volume of new essays stages an intergenerational dialogue among philosophers to introduce and deepen engagement with U.S Latinx and Latin American feminist philosophy, and to explore their "theories in the flesh."

2018 Outstanding Academic Title, given by Choice Magazine An exploration of twentieth and twenty-first century U.S. Muslim womanhood that centers the lived experience of women of color For Sylvia Chan-Malik, Muslim womanhood is constructed through everyday and embodied acts of resistance, what she calls affective insurgency. In negotiating the histories of anti-Blackness, U.S. imperialism, and women's rights of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Being Muslim explores how U.S. Muslim women's identities are expressions of Islam as both Black protest religion and universal faith tradition.

Over the past thirty years, a strong canon of Indigenous feminist literature has addressed how Indigenous women are uniquely and dually affected by colonialism and patriarchy. Indigenous women have long recognized that their intersectional realities were not represented in mainstream feminism, which was principally white, middle-class, and often ignored realities of colonialism. As Indigenous feminist ideals grew, Indigenous women became increasingly multi-vocal, with multiple and oppositional understandings of what constituted Indigenous feminism and whether or not it was a useful concept.

This book analyzes the literary representation of Indigenous women in Latin American letters from colonization to the twentieth century, arguing that contemporary theorization of Indigenous feminism deconstructs denigratory imagery and offers a (re)signification, (re)semantization and reinvigoration of what it means to be an Indigenous woman.

The first edition of Making Space for Indigenous Feminism proposed that Indigenous feminism was a valid and indeed essential theoretical and activist position, and introduced a roster of important Indigenous feminist contributors. This new edition builds on the success and research of the first and provides updated and new chapters that cover a wide range of some of the most important issues facing Indigenous peoples today: violence against women, recovery of Indigenous self-determination, racism, misogyny and decolonization.

An examination of the cultural assumptions embedded in the theories propounded by white feminists, this important contribution to fourth-world theory provides a distinctive perspective on the dichotomy between Eurocentric and Aboriginal thought. Challenges to the hegemony of contemporary feminist theory are extended to facilitate consideration of self-government on Aboriginal terms. This thoughtful, culturally relevant analysis reconsiders the tacit resuppositions that have guided dominant feminist theory.

Hawaii Is My Haven maps the context and contours of Black life in the Hawaiian Islands. This ethnography emerges from a decade of fieldwork with both Hawaii-raised Black locals and Black transplants who moved to the Islands from North America, Africa, and the Caribbean. Nitasha Tamar Sharma highlights the paradox of Hawaii as a multiracial paradise and site of unacknowledged anti-Black racism.