by Alice Wong (Editor)
★★★★½
Tag archives: nonfiction
Road Map for Revolutionaries: Resistance, Activism, and Advocacy for All
by Elisa Camahort Page, Carolyn Gerin, Jamia Wilson
The audience in mind swings back and forth between middle grade and middle aged. It’s lean in activism that is specifically not anticapitalist. There is a fair amount that is useful but the moments of cringe are overpowering. A selection:
- ‘Standing up for
The Good Immigrant
by Nikesh Shukla (Editor)
★★★½
The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart
by Alicia Garza
Building on decades of behind the scenes work in Black-led organisations for social justice, Garza outlines the mission of identifying common goals to forge enduring and broadened relationships, and organising strategically to transform the dynamics of power—with a vision to secure the ability to shape every policy decision … Read more
Lady Sings the Blues
by Billie Holiday
★★★★★
It’s Not About the Burqa
by Mariam Khan (Editor)
★★★½
Decolonization is Not a Metaphor
by Eve Tuck, K. Wayne Yang
★★★★½
Shit, Actually: The Definitive, 100% Objective Guide to Modern Cinema
by Lindy West
★★★½
Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex
by Angela Chen
★★★★
Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
by Mikki Kendall
★★★½
To Exist is to Resist: Black Feminism in Europe
by Akwugo Emejulu (Editor), Francesca Sobande (Editor)
Highlights:
“Those Who Fight For Us Without Us Are Against Us: Afrofeminist Activism in France” by Cyn Awori Othieno and Annette Davis on behalf of Mwasi Collectif In France self-labelled antiracist organisations along with the status quo cry ‘reverse racism’ not just when trying … Read more
The History of White People
by Nell Irvin Painter
The history of fragile white men stroking each other’s egos with pseudoscience, insisting too much. The book is drily informative with interspersals of bemusingly casual commentary, ironic speech, and belaboured listings of abuse-as-scholarship. The last chapter jumps sixty years, promotes exceptionalism, and asks naive questions for the … Read more
How the Chinese Created Canada
by Adrian Ma
A casual and loosely informative read with moments of appealing to the colonialist state. The humorous asides are painful.
Discourse on Colonialism
by Aimé Césaire
★★★
Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism
by Uma Narayan
Fluidly written essays about cultivating dissent and critical thinking amidst intermingled identities and the complications of colonialism
Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday
by Angela Y. Davis
★★★★
Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples
by Linda Tuhiwai Smith
★★★★
Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power
by Lola Olufemi
An incisive work of Black feminism in Britain covering reproductive justice, trans inclusionary feminism, supporting sex workers, prison abolition, and—excitingly—art as witness. I would have been bowled over if the chapter on food concentrated on food justice with inspiration from Vandana Shiva. Olufemi envisages a living, breathing practice … Read more
Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development
by Vandana Shiva
First off, Shiva cannot seem to write without clobbering repetition. The heart of her ideas and activism, however, are galvanising and foundational. She has transformed the way I think about food justice and agroecology. She questions the sanctity of science and development and [reveals] that these are not … Read more
Whites, Jews, and Us: Toward a Politics of Revolutionary Love
by Houria Bouteldja
She talks about colonialist principles being applied to Europe in WWII (Césaire), conditional absorption into whiteness, and revisionist histories—in riddling analogies and immoderate irony. She writes more straightforwardly about internalised racism and white men in Europe claiming to stand up for women only when they can pin patriarchal … Read more