Research Guides: Racial Justice Resources for Activists, Advocates &amp; Allies: Black feminism

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Black feminism

The Revolutionary Practice of Black Feminisms (NMAMHC)
The black feminist tradition grows not out of other movements, but out of the condition of being both black and a woman. It is a long tradition which resists easy definition and is characterized by its multi-dimensional approach to liberation.

Despite different visions, a few foundational principles do exist among black feminisms:
-Black women’s experience of racism, sexism, and classism are inseparable.
-Their needs and worldviews are distinct from those of black men and white women.
-There is no contradiction between the struggle against racism, sexism, and all other-isms. All must be addressed simultaneously.

“If, as Black feminists contended, oppression positioned Black women at the lowest rung on the social ladder, then eradicating their oppression would necessarily ameliorate oppression for everyone” -Robert J. Patterson

Black feminism videos

Beverly Guy-Sheftall – Say Her Name: The Urgency of Black Feminism Now Black feminist discourse and activism have been significant interventions in a variety of social justice movements in the U.S. since the 19th century, though this has not always been acknowledged. In the aftermath of reforms catalyzed by the Black Lives Matter Movement, a queer black feminist project, Guy-Sheftall’s talk will reflect upon the transformations in civil society, academe, electoral politics, the criminal justice system, and other spaces that have occurred over the past year as a result of recent protests around systemic racism and other issues.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor: What We Can Learn From the Black Feminists of the Combahee River Collective We continue our interview with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor about the new collection of essays she edited that, titled How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective.

Black feminism: web resources

10 Black Feminists You Need to Know About
highlights activists and advocates of the civil rights and women’s rights movements, who tirelessly worked to make the world a more equal place. They formed important organizations for people of color and women that are still present today, questioned the dominant white and male order, and spoke on the intersectionality of their race and gender.
African American feminist theories and literary criticism
Black feminist theory, as a political enterprise, embodies analogous goals, and has used black women’s writing, including fiction, poetry, autobiography, memoir, and manifestos as loci from which to theorize its goals and responsibilities.
Black Lives Matter: Why Black Feminism?
In this essay, the author investigates why Black feminism, rather than feminism, is an adequate framework for Black Lives Matter. This is achieved
through the following critical perspectives and strategies: racism, inclusion/exclusion, the role of Black queer women, the recognition of differences
among women, the interlocking systems of oppression, and agenda making.
Black sororities have stood at the forefront of Black achievement for more than a century
African American women created their own sororities as communities of resistance that would allow them to survive and achieve in an oppressive society, refute stereotypes, celebrate their own cultures and fight sexism and racism – including gendered racism.
What's in a name? Womanism, black feminism, and beyond (Collins, Patricia Hill.)
African American women's ideas and experiences have achieved a visibility unthinkable in the past. There are debates about whether black women's standpoint should be named "womanism" or "black feminism."

Black feminism: podcasts

Hear to Slay
Hear to Slay is the black feminist podcast of your dreams—compelling conversations curated in only the way black women can. Each week, Roxane Gay and Tressie McMillan Cottom offer uncommonly incisive reads of the politics that shape the world we live in and the popular culture we consume.
Black Feminist Rants
Black Feminist Rants is an independent podcast that holds conversations on Reproductive Justice and Activism by centering the experiences of Black women and femmes navigating social justice spaces and the world. BFR will cover topics within the Reproductive Justice framework and beyond. Our host and creator is LaKia Williams a young Reproductive Justice organizer from the South who has experience in advocating for contraceptive equity, reproductive autonomy and birthing justice.

Black feminism books

Abolition. Feminism. Now by Angela Y. Davis
Call Number: HV7936.R3 D38 2022
ISBN: 9781642593969
Publication Date: 2022-01-18
"In the book we constantly tried to point out abolition is about rebuilding even more than it is about dismantling. Ruthie Gilmore for example says that “abolition is less about prisons than it is about presence.” We think about the process of getting rid of prisons in conjunction with presenting new modes of justice. We cannot continue to have a retributive justice system if we want to imagine new ways of addressing the issues that prisons simply cannot address." -Bazaar; Abolition. Feminism. Now. is a celebration of freedom work, a movement genealogy, a call to action, and a challenge to those who think of abolition and feminism as separate--even incompatible--political projects. In this remarkable collaborative work, leading scholar-activists Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, and Beth E. Richie surface the often unrecognized genealogies of queer, anti-capitalist, internationalist, grassroots, and women-of-color-led feminist movements, struggles, and organizations that have helped to define abolition and feminism in the twenty-first century.
Ain't I a Woman by Bell Hooks
Call Number: LANGSAM Stacks E185.86 .H68
ISBN: 9780861043798
Publication Date: 1987-03-20
Ain't I a Woman is deeply critical of the racism inherent in the thought of many middle-class white feminists who have failed to address issues of race and class.While acknowledging the conflict of loyalty to race or sex is still a dilemma, hooks challenges the view that race and gender are two separate phenomena, insisting that the struggles to end racism and sexism are inextricably intertwined.
Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists a graphic history of women's fight for their rights by A. D'Amico (Illustrator); Mikki Kendall
Call Number: OhioLINK
ISBN: 9780399581793
Publication Date: 2019-11-05
a fun, fascinating, and full-color exploration of that important history, tracing its roots from antiquity to show how 21st-century feminism developed. Along the way, you'll meet a wide range of important historical figures and learn about many political movements, including suffrage, abolition, labor, LGBT liberation, the waves of feminism, and more.
At the Dark End of the Street by Danielle L. McGuire
Call Number: OhioLINK
ISBN: 9780307389244
Publication Date: 2011-10-04
Danielle McGuire writes about the rape in 1944 of a twenty-four-year-old mother and sharecropper, Recy Taylor, who strolled toward home after an evening of singing and praying at the Rock Hill Holiness Church in Abbeville, Alabama. Seven white men, armed with knives and shotguns, ordered the young woman into their green Chevrolet, raped her, and left her for dead. The president of the local NAACP branch office sent his best investigator and organizer--Rosa Parks--to Abbeville. In taking on this case, Parks launched a movement that exposed a ritualized history of sexual assault against Black women and added fire to the growing call for change.
Bad Feminist: essays by Roxane Gay
Call Number: LANGSAM Stacks HQ1421 .G39 2014
ISBN: 9780062282712
Publication Date: 2014-08-05
Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better, coming from one of our most interesting and important cultural critics.
Black Feminism Reimagined by Jennifer C. Nash
ISBN: 9781478002253
Publication Date: 2018-12-06
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.
The Black Feminist Reader by Joy James (Editor); Tracey Denean Sharply-Whiting (Editor)
Call Number: LANGSAM Stacks PS153.N5 B5536 2000
ISBN: 0631210067
Publication Date: 2000-06-16
Organized into two parts, "Literary Theory" and "Social and Political Theory," this Reader explores issues of community, identity, justice, and the marginalization of African American and Caribbean women in literature, society, and political movements.
Black Feminist Thought: knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins
Call Number: LANGSAM Stacks HQ1426 .C633 1991
ISBN: 9780415905978
Publication Date: 1990-09-13
Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals as well as those African-American women outside academe. She provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde.
A Black Women's History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry; Kali Nicole Gross
Call Number: LANGSAM & BLUE ASH stacks E185.86 .B475 2020
ISBN: 9780807001998
Publication Date: 2021-03-16
A vibrant and empowering history that emphasizes the perspectives and stories of African American women to show how they are-and have always been-instrumental in shaping our country
This Bridge Called My Back by Gloria Anzaldúa (Editor); Cherríe Moraga (Editor)
Call Number: PS509.F44 T5 2015
ISBN: 9781438454399
Publication Date: 2015-03-01
Updated and expanded edition of the foundational text of women of color feminism. Through personal essays, criticism, interviews, testimonials, poetry, and visual art, the collection explores the complex confluence of identities--race, class, gender, and sexuality--systemic to women of color oppression and liberation
The Crunk Feminist Collection by Brittney C. Cooper (Editor); Robin M. Boylorn (Editor); Susana M. Morris (Editor)
Call Number: LANGSAM Stacks HQ1421 .C78 2017
ISBN: 9781558619432
Publication Date: 2017-01-10
For the Crunk Feminist Collective, their academic day jobs were lacking in conversations they actually wanted - relevant, real conversations about how race and gender politics intersect with pop culture and current events. To address this void, they started a blog. Now with an annual readership of nearly one million, their posts foster dialogue about activist methods, intersectionality, and sisterhood. In this collection of essays, these self-described as 'critical homegirls' tackle life stuck between loving hip hop and ratchet culture while hating patriarchy, misogyny and sexism.
A Feminist Reader 4 Volume Set by Sharon M. Harris (Editor); Linda K. Hughes (Editor)
Call Number: LANGSAM Stacks PN56.F46 F463 2013 v.1-4
ISBN: 9780521513814
Publication Date: 2013-04-25
Modern feminism has deep roots. Over the past 2500 years, female writers and thinkers across the world have expressed their feelings about gender roles, their frustrations and successes, their struggles for equality. This four-volume anthology brings together the richest collection of feminist texts available with over 120 entries, most of them complete essays or chapters, arranged chronologically.
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
Call Number: Blue Ash Stacks PS3569.H3324 F6 2010
ISBN: 0684843269
Publication Date: 1997-09-01
Passionate and fearless, Shange's words reveal what it is to be of color and female in the twentieth century.
Glorying in Tribulation: The Life Work of Sojourner Truth by Erlene Stetson; Linda David
ISBN: 0870133373
Publication Date: 1994-08-31
To this day Truth's legacy challenges deep-rooted historical beliefs about cultural ownership, about the qualifications for citizenship and suffrage, and about the role played by African American women in claiming those rights.
Home Girls: a Black feminist anthology by Barbara Smith (Editor)
ISBN: 9780813527536
Publication Date: 2000-03-01
The pioneering anthology Home Girls features writings by Black feminist and lesbian activists on topics both provocative and profound. Since its initial publication in 1983, it has become an essential text on Black women's lives and writings.
Hood Feminism: notes from the women that a movement forgot by Mikki Kendall
ISBN: 9780525560548
Publication Date: 2020-02-25
How can we stand in solidarity as a movement, Kendall asks, when there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others? In her searing collection of essays, Mikki Kendall takes aim at the legitimacy of the modern feminist movement, arguing that it has chronically failed to address the needs of all but a few women
How We Get Free : black feminism and the Combahee River Collective by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Editor)
Call Number: OhioLINK
ISBN: 9781608468553
Publication Date: 2017-12-05
The Combahee River Collective, a path-breaking group of radical black feminists, was one of the most important organizations to develop out of the antiracist and women's liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s. In this collection of essays and interviews edited by activist-scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, founding members of the organization and contemporary activists reflect on the legacy of its contributions to Black feminism and its impact on today's struggles.
In Search of Our Mother's Gardens by Alice Walker
Call Number: LANGSAM Stacks PS3573.A57 Z467 1983
ISBN: 0151445257
Publication Date: 1983-10-10
As a woman, writer, mother, and feminist, Walker explores the theories and practices of feminism, incorporating what she calls the “womanist” tradition of African american women.
Killing Rage: ending racism by Bell Hooks
Call Number: LANGSAM Stacks E185.615 .H645 1995
ISBN: 9780805037821
Publication Date: 1995-09-15
"One of our country's premier cultural and social critics, bell hooks has always maintained that eradicating racism and eradicating sexism must go hand in hand. But whereas many women have been recognized for their writing on gender politics, the female voice has been all but locked out of the public discourse on race. Killing Rage speaks to this imbalance. These twenty-three essays are written from a black and feminist perspective, and they tackle the bitter difficulties of racism by envisioning a world without it. They address a spectrum of topics having to do with race and racism in the United States: psychological trauma among African Americans; friendship between black women and white women; anti-Semitism and racism; and internalized racism in movies and the media. And in the title essay, hooks writes about the "killing rage"--the fierce anger of black people stung by repeated instances of everyday racism--finding in that rage a healing source of love and strength and a catalyst for positive change."
The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory by Lisa Disch (Editor); Mary Hawkesworth (Editor)
Call Number: OhioLINK
ISBN: 9780199328581
Publication Date: 2016-01-26
The handbook identifies limitations of key epistemic assumptions that inform traditional scholarship and shows how theorizing from women's and men's lives has profound effects on the conceptualization of central categories, whether the field of analysis isaesthetics, biology, cultural studies, development, economics, film studies, health, history, literature, politics, religion, science studies, sexualities, violence, or war.
Playing in the Dark: whiteness and the literary imagination by Toni Morrison
Call Number: Blue Ash Stacks PS173.N4 M67 1993
ISBN: 9780679745426
Publication Date: 1993-07-27
Morrison shows how much the themes of freedom and individualism, manhood and innocence, depended on the existence of a black population that was manifestly unfree--and that came to serve white authors as embodiments of their own fears and desires.
Reclaiming Our Space : how Black feminists are changing the world from the tweets to the streets by Feminista Jones
Call Number: LANGSAM Cohen HQ1197 .J66 2019
ISBN: 9780807055373
Publication Date: 2019-01-29
A treatise of Black women's transformative influence in media, entertainment, and politics, and why this intersectional movement building, especially on Twitter, is essential to the resistance.
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
Call Number: OhioLINK
ISBN: 9780143134442
Publication Date: 2020-02-25
In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope. The groundbreaking feminist's timely collection of nonfiction writings on race, gender, and LGBTQ issues is now for the first time in Penguin Classics as part of the Penguin Vitae series, with a foreword by poet Mahogany L. Browne.
Talking Back by Bell Hooks
Call Number: LANGSAM Stacks E185.86 .H74 1989
ISBN: 0896083535
Publication Date: 1999-07-01
When it comes to bigotry, there is no mincing words; bell hooks talks back. In Talking Back, this voice is as strong and uncompromising as ever but it is also much more personal. She writes about the meaning of feminist consciousness in daily life and about self-recovery, about overcoming white- and male- supremacy, and about intimate relationship, exploring the point where the public and private meet. 'Domination is not just a subject for discourse and books, ' she concludes. 'It is about pain. Even before the words, we remember the pain
Unapologetic: a Black, queer, and feminist mandate for radical movements by Charlene Carruthers
Call Number: SearchOhio
ISBN: 9780807039823
Publication Date: 2019-08-27
This book provides a vision for how social justice movements can become sharper and more effective through principled struggle, healing justice, and leadership development. It also offers a flexible model of what deeply effective organizing can be, anchored in the Chicago model of activism, which features long-term commitment, cultural sensitivity, creative strategizing, and multiple cross-group alliances. And Unapologetic provides a clear framework for activists committed to building transformative power, encouraging young people to see themselves as visionaries and leaders.
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
ISBN: 9781101911761
Publication Date: 2015-02-03
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. 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 Womanist Reader by Layli Phillips
Call Number: LANGSAM Stacks HQ1197 .W66 2006
ISBN: 9780415954105
Publication Date: 2006-09-20
The Womanist Reader is the first volume to anthologize the major works of womanist scholarship. Charting the course of womanist theory from its genesis as Alice Walker's African-American feminism, through Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi's African womanism and Clenora Hudson-Weems' Africana womanism, to its present-day expression as a global, anti-oppressionist perspective rooted in the praxis of everyday women of color, this interdisciplinary reader traces the rich and diverse history of a quarter century of womanist thought.
Women, Race and Class by Angela Y. Davis
Call Number: LANGSAM Stacks HT1521 .D38 1983
ISBN: 0394713516
Publication Date: 1983-02-12
Davis not only contextualizes the legacy and pitfalls of civil and women's rights activists, but also discusses Communist women, the murder of Emmitt Till, and Margaret Sanger's racism. Davis shows readers how the inequalities between Black and white women influence the contemporary issues of rape, reproductive freedom, housework and child care in this bold and indispensable work.