Reviews with content warning for Physical abuse - Women, Race, & Class

Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

Women, Race, & Class by Angela Y. Davis

11 reviews

sashasghost's review

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.75

a must read for all people

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stevia333k's review

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dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

5.0

i was thinking 4.75 stars due to how other books have made better citations to the points brought up, but i decided to round it up to 5 stars because so much of this holds up over 4 decades later!

i listened to readings & TTS of this book. it's from 1981 (such as we don't need to refer to fiction to call out paternalism anymore. we have books like "pushout" & "they were her property". that being said the reference to fiction on that point made me realize that history was conflated with whatever white supremacist bourgeois patriarchs allowed.) so some parts are outdated, but a ton of it holds up, partly because a lot of the white supremacist dynamics within feminist movements hadn't changed. like chapter 2 on white women organizing having paternalism problems articulated the problems i'm having right now to a tee, and the other chapters gave me information about corners i need to back out of (3 point turn). this book is considered a foundation for intersectionality & uses the triple jeopardy model. basically this is a book that a lot of the people i listen to have read.

as i was reading this book i was also listening to "rest is resistance" by tricia hersey, which is giving me a lot of insight on abolitionism & preventing burnout & self-forgiveness. i mention this because this book also critiques bourgeois praxis, and that's important because to say the least of it the labor theory of value, business expansion & imperialist expansion mean the wage gap will exist as long as there is capitalism because otherwise employers wouldn't be able to figure out ranking among themselves.

this was such a good book, i wish i had been given this book instead of being offered "ain't i a woman" by bell hooks & "luna" back in elementary school. like seriously, the covers & fictionality scared me on some of those, but omg. like my transfeminism came from me being 2 years old & in reconciling why racism is bad & feminism is good figured out that the genitalia is in fact a policing stereotype as other gender stereotypes, hence girlhood is separate from genitalia, and this book was speaking to that.

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tenori's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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brnineworms's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative medium-paced

4.5

Women, Race & Class features frank discussion of, as the title suggests, sexism, racism, and classism. It can get pretty brutal at times, focusing for the most part on the conditions of slavery (particularly for enslaved women) and on the fight(s) for equality immediately after the abolition of slavery in the United States.

Davis examines the unique oppression experienced by Black women on account of both their gender and their race, and the ensuing need for intersectional politics. She highlights the solidarity between abolitionists and early feminists, but she also examines instances where solidarity was lacking to say the least – feminists buying in to horrifically racist accusations that Black men are almost all sexual predators, for example. I previously wasn’t aware that the Republican Party had weaponised women’s suffrage against Black enfranchisement, appropriating what should have been a push for social justice as a Trojan horse for racist propaganda and policies. It doesn’t surprise me, of course, but historical details like that are worth learning and learning from.

This book is over forty years old now, yet it remains infuriatingly relevant. It’s powerful and incisive – I would recommend reading it if you haven’t already. I can see why Angela Davis is such a celebrated writer, and I’m eager to read her other famous book, Are Prisons Obsolete?, when I get the chance.

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kenz73's review

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challenging informative medium-paced

5.0

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aelunny's review

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informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

I knew I was in for a good book and I'm so grateful for the timing of when I read this. It's incredibly well written and is a page turner (I may have lost the physical book under my bed for 3 months but it really only took me two days of reading). This book is an important resource for understanding intersectionality and questioning the capitalist, and self driven lens we have been subjected to look through within this society.

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