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A review by joemacare
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
3.0
Anthologies of this kind usually struggle with two challenges: variability in the quality of the pieces, and how to avoid every other chapter restating the same arguments and assumptions. June Eric-Udorie's collection handles the first challenge more successfully than the latter. Emer O'Toole's is the only piece in here that isn't good, and that's because its assimilationist, concession-making argument seems to stand in opposition to the rest of the book's politics (it does at least make a very cogent argument though, even if I'm not convinced).
The latter problem for anthologies isn't as successfully dodged, and I found myself wishing that the book had defined a few concepts (such as intersectionality) once in the foreword and then cut any repetition of that from the individual essays. Still, this is an essential gift for your well-meaning liberal friend who isn't very online, and a very comprehensive guide to what mainstream feminism (and other liberalisms and leftisms!) tend to leave out of their analysis, from fatphobia and ableism to anti-Blackness and imperialism, and the best essays here, from authors like Juliet Jacques, Zoé Samudzi, Charlotte Shane, Selina Thompson, and Frances Ryan, are worth anyone's time.
The latter problem for anthologies isn't as successfully dodged, and I found myself wishing that the book had defined a few concepts (such as intersectionality) once in the foreword and then cut any repetition of that from the individual essays. Still, this is an essential gift for your well-meaning liberal friend who isn't very online, and a very comprehensive guide to what mainstream feminism (and other liberalisms and leftisms!) tend to leave out of their analysis, from fatphobia and ableism to anti-Blackness and imperialism, and the best essays here, from authors like Juliet Jacques, Zoé Samudzi, Charlotte Shane, Selina Thompson, and Frances Ryan, are worth anyone's time.