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A review by arrianne
Heart Of The Race: Black Women's Lives in Britain by Suzanne Scafe, Stella Dadzie, Beverley Bryan
5.0
Originally written in the 80s, with an updated interview with the authors at the end, a lot of this feels like it could have been written yesterday. Offers a brilliant insight into the experience of Black women in Britain, backed up by personal experiences, with an educated description of the history. Also good analysis of the conflict between the Black women’s movement and other movements, like Black movements in general and white feminism.
I also think I learned more about the history of Africa and slavery reading the introduction to this than I ever learned in the 35 years before I read this book, and certainly more than I was ever taught in school.
One criticism that I had which was brushed over in the interview at the end was a lack of LGBTQ+ representation — I noticed its absence in the text and in the interview the authors mentioned that this had been a criticism previously levelled at them (that they excluded black lesbians and were not LGBTQ+ friendly) but basically dismissed it as being not true without backing it up. It was all a bit “didn’t happen”, or “we didn’t have time for that, they could have just organised stuff themselves”.
I also think I learned more about the history of Africa and slavery reading the introduction to this than I ever learned in the 35 years before I read this book, and certainly more than I was ever taught in school.
One criticism that I had which was brushed over in the interview at the end was a lack of LGBTQ+ representation — I noticed its absence in the text and in the interview the authors mentioned that this had been a criticism previously levelled at them (that they excluded black lesbians and were not LGBTQ+ friendly) but basically dismissed it as being not true without backing it up. It was all a bit “didn’t happen”, or “we didn’t have time for that, they could have just organised stuff themselves”.