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74
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
87/100Critics
36/100Scholars
98/100Author:
Rafia Zakaria
Publisher:
W. W. Norton & Company
Date:
August 17, 2021
An overview and counter-manifesto to white feminism's global, long-standing affinity with colonial, patriarchal, and white supremacist ideals.
What The Reviewers Say
... we see that [Zakaria] is not on some earnest mission to educate the misinformed or enlighten the uninformed. This, as Tressie McMillan Cottom would say, ain't her row to hoe. Instead, Zakaria presents, calmly and methodically, plenty of well-researched evidence for why white feminism is messed up and why it must be dismantled.
A passionate and provocative new book.
It is odd that, while the kernel of content in this book is formed around a structural critique—one that would appear to demand a very specific political response—it comes to us cushioned in an equal bulk of light, fleecy padding that draws the attention pleasantly away from such partisan concerns. 'I want to be able to meet at a wine bar,' Zakaria writes, 'and have an honest conversation about change.' It is surely a reasonable wish, but a minimal demand. Zakaria’s central, well-researched chapters are framed on one side by a series of encounters with obnoxious white women; and on the other by a call to action that reads as an incitement to better etiquette. Despite brief gestures at white supremacy’s deep 'political' roots, these chapters call for us simply to 'excise' unpalatable behaviors.
While Zakaria’s argument is not the only one of its kind, her examination of current examples from politics and pop culture furnishes crucial evidence of the continued colonization of feminism by white women, and she helps to bring this conversation into mainstream view..
