Can We All Be Feminists?: New Writing from Brit Bennett, Nicole Dennis-Benn, and 15 Others on Intersectionality, Identity, and the Way Forward for Feminism

by June Eric-Udorie (Editor)

Paperback, 2018

Status

Checked out

Publication

Penguin Books (2018), 288 pages

Description

"Why is it difficult for so many women to fully identify with the word "feminist"? How do our personal histories and identities affect our relationship to feminism? Why is intersectionality so important? Can a feminist movement that doesn't take other identities like race, religion, or socioeconomic class into account even be considered feminism? How can we make feminism more inclusive? In Can We All Be Feminists?, seventeen established and emerging writers from diverse backgrounds wrestle with these questions, exploring what feminism means to them in the context of their other identities--from a hijab-wearing Muslim to a disability rights activist to a body-positive performance artist to a transgender journalist. Edited by the brilliant, galvanizing, and dazzlingly precocious nineteen-year-old feminist activist and writer June Eric-Udorie, this impassioned, thought-provoking collection showcases the marginalized women whose voices are so often drowned out and offers a vision for a new, comprehensive feminism that is truly for all"--… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member MyPenNameOnly
I read this inspiring book about womanhood and the feminists who are fighting a struggle for their gender thanks to my good neighbor and “sister” who allowed me to read it on her KINDLE before she did.

What woman doesn’t know the 1971 song by Helen Reddy “I Am Woman”? This song, is a song
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which celebrates female empowerment and became an enduring anthem for the women’s liberation movement. We need to remember that this movement has been a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism.

The problem for some, I feel, is that this branch of what can be described as being profound feminism which has its basis in present-day thinking by women from a broad spectrum of diverse cultural, economic, and racial backgrounds to lift themselves up from being merely a second-class society member. And, if wasn’t for these feminists where would womankind be today.

However, I feel that according to an on-line definition of “Intersectionality”: It is not a property of a particular school of feminism. Intersectional feminism is a comprehensive social justice doctrine somewhat inspired by feminist ideology and which has adopted much of its terminology from feminism, but is itself not feminism.

But these days, with the ongoing struggle for gender equality, the diversified classifications of who women are, creates a conflict for those who called themselves a feminist.

The beauty that I found in reading this marvelous, rather somewhat revolutionary ideological book whose intention is to promote the too often overlook voices of women today, to be inspirational for feminists everywhere. And it’s through the 17 essays contained in this anthology, written by 17 authors with highly diversified backgrounds and how they deal with the myriad of issues surrounding feminists and their movement, that readers are almost guaranteed a change in their perception of themselves and hopefully will teach its readers something they never knew before regarding feminism itself.

In the end, the burning question for all feminists everywhere is whether this book will, with the all the paraphernalia it is giving its readers, as well as a renewed assessment of what being a true feminist is for them, be enough to recreate feminism into something which will truthfully befits what it should be for today and for all of today’s women. Only time will tell what the ultimate outcome would be, and hopefully, I’d love to see it happen; which is why I’ve given the book’s marvelous, insightful editor, June Eric-Udorie, 5 STARS, for having diligently compiled all the essays it contains.

And hopefully the words of Helen Reddy’s song will once again truly mean something.
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Awards

Bread and Roses Award (Shortlist — 2019)

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2018

Physical description

288 p.; 5.06 inches

ISBN

0143132377 / 9780143132370

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