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A review by outcolder
Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left by Sara Evans
5.0
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed reading this. I love the story of SNCC so much, no matter how often I read a retelling I am immediately riveted. There are more recent collections of women's POV of SNCC, but Evans has a strong narrative voice and keeps the pace up as she references various memoirs and personal interviews she'd done practically in the heat of the moment. Especially the SDS material had not had time to cool off when she wrote this and the incandescent rage throughout the second half of the book makes for exciting reading.
"Personal Politics" is cited often in more recent books about SNCC and SDS, and those mentions tend to be: "it wasn't quite like that." But now that I've read it, it doesn't seem to contradict the picture I'd already formed. SNCC was a place where women experienced more power than they had in their everyday lives, but as things got more and more black power-ish, women began to question their own oppression more. SDS was a nightmare, run by white-boy know-it-alls who somehow thought that words speak louder than actions, and that women are "girls" who should concentrate on making lunch and being available for "free love." If you hate "boomers," this will really feed your fire.
I think readers involved in the feminist conversation in the 2020s will find this work interesting for how it can inform the discussion around what they call "white feminism." Women of color are of course front and center in SNCC but more or less invisible in this book after that, the women in the Black Panthers and other radical groups beyond SDS in the late 60s are not included. Considering what a page turner this is, though, might as well take a few days to plow through it. You're certainly going to see it cited in whatever you read about the history of Second Wave Feminism.
"Personal Politics" is cited often in more recent books about SNCC and SDS, and those mentions tend to be: "it wasn't quite like that." But now that I've read it, it doesn't seem to contradict the picture I'd already formed. SNCC was a place where women experienced more power than they had in their everyday lives, but as things got more and more black power-ish, women began to question their own oppression more. SDS was a nightmare, run by white-boy know-it-alls who somehow thought that words speak louder than actions, and that women are "girls" who should concentrate on making lunch and being available for "free love." If you hate "boomers," this will really feed your fire.
I think readers involved in the feminist conversation in the 2020s will find this work interesting for how it can inform the discussion around what they call "white feminism." Women of color are of course front and center in SNCC but more or less invisible in this book after that, the women in the Black Panthers and other radical groups beyond SDS in the late 60s are not included. Considering what a page turner this is, though, might as well take a few days to plow through it. You're certainly going to see it cited in whatever you read about the history of Second Wave Feminism.