Customer Reviews

Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism (Live Girls)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

One day, after four months working in a largely white-staffed major chain bookstore, I discovered this book on the shelf. By the end, I was left wishing I had been able to submit a piece and hoping that I would one day find these other women.

I was excited to see the inclusion of American Indian women; we are all too often tossed aside- not only by anti-Indianist mainstream society, but by other people of color themselves. Hernandez' book is not only hers, not only the contributors', but all women of color's. These are individual voices of passionate and determined women of color, which are the real voices of feminism today, not the pedagogical discourse with which all women's studies majors are bombarded.

I enjoyed the stories of other queer women of color. I do not believe that these should be difficult to understand or relate to by straight women, after all, are not all queer women forced by society to understand the stories and trials of heterosexuality? I applaud Hernandez, not only for including the stories of queer women of color, but celebrating them as well.

At the United States Student Association, when someone calls "Holla Back," the room resounds with "I've got your back!" To all the women of color in the world- the editor and contributors of this book have got yours.

Colonize This will make some readers uncomfortable to the contributors' honesty and in some cases anger. The various entries bring race to the center stage and this in itself will cause some readers to shift uncomfortably as they re-think their own particular privilege.

This book is ideal in a women's studies classroom or ethnic studies, english, or sociology. I think the book would be best served by also reading _This Bridge Called My Back_, since so many of the contributors refer to _Bridge_ as causing their "click" of feminism.

Colonize This isn't your typical academic tome, but a personal (and political) book that should cause some lively debate.

After reading colonize this I was filled with a sense of all the possibilities of life, a sense of courage and a feeling that being a woman of color was not a life-sentence. Instead the women who wrote in this book made me feel that I didn't have to fit into someone else's mold of what it was I should be. Instead I could choose to love and live and learn the way that I felt was right what my heart told me.

Antonio Gramsci once said "we are forced into an interregnum in which the old is dying and new cannot yet be born". 'Colonize This!...' is the new being born. Arriving at a moment when feminism is thought to have been 'achieved' by so many people and more women choose not to identify as feminist, this book announces a thunderous revolt.

The editors have selected writing by young women of color that is so compelling you'll have a hard time putting this down. A mixed-race woman describes how her supposedly liberal father, who taught her about black feminism, is having sexual encounters with many women of color, and abusing her mother. This piece is a reminder that male liberalism is not synonymous with an anti-patriarchal, anti-white supremacist politics.

The book is also accessible to people in a wide age range, so important at a time when radical feminism is being untaught or worse, ignored, at so many levels of public and private education.

Alongside Gloria Anzaldua and Ana Louis Keating's 'revisiting' book, 'This Bridge Called Home', 'Colonize This!' is an important reminder that, as Arundati Roy said, "another world is possible". The aim of both volumes is to demystify threadbare feminist certainties and re-radicalize the ongoing project of tearing down the massive structural forces of patriarchy, white supremacy, and homophobia.

A REVOLUTIONARY COLLECTION of young women's voices who dare to break silences and challenge their oppressors like the feminists from THIS BRIDGE CALLED MY BACK. Young feminists of color take you there~ HIT YOU RIGHT IN THE GUT~ with explosive personal narratives that resist white supremacy and critically analyze how a new generation of feminists are standing on their own two feet and shouting to the world: "We are here! We fight against domination! You better listen up!" A fresh, young look at women's issues from diverse perspectives. As a young lesbian feminist of color, I am inspired by these women's stories and strength. I couldn't put the book down for a minute! It is a must-read for anti-racist feminist thinkers.

Initially, I wanted to respond to the person who wrote 'racist' to say, that he's an ignorant idiot; particularly for his unexamined complicity in affirming the oppressive hegemony that burdens this culture and society. By attempting to silence and dismiss the marginalized voices of women of color he is only perpetuating racism, and extendedly, sexism, classism, neocolonialism, and homophobia by hiding them and pretending that they don`t exist. However, I thought that maybe his apathy is only the result of being uninformed, unexposed, and/or simply being uneducated. I mean, who has the audacity to tactlessly claim in public that "To think about racism is to be racist. [and that, therefore,] People should think about other things." This is, either written by (1) someone from a position of unearned privilege; inferred by his/her inability to find urgency with the issue; or (2) someone who simply can`t read.

Slavery's long dead dude, not the embedded institution of oppressive "-isms" that circulate and reside within this society. And I know that sometimes it's hard to accept or understand that you're an oppressor too.

Anyway, that's what I want to say. Instead, I'm going to be passive and say:

Well, there's a great distinction between being racial and being racist. A racist is someone who vilifies another person through that person's race; and/or discriminates or commits violence against another person on the basis of that person's race. When a person emphasizes race to substantiate the socio-political flesh of his/her experiences, however, I don't read it as being racist. To me it is a reflection of the reality upon which other people are situated; and how that reality is defined and determined, sometimes, on the basis of one's skin.

This book is not "racist." This is a glorious book. A necessary book. A book that must be promoted and made accessible for everyone to read. Yes, it speaks about feminism, but it expands and complicates the term to include ALL women and to acknowledge, more importantly, that race, class, and sexuality intricately intersects with gender in this global matrix of domination and in how some people define or identify themselves. It is, undeniably, for and about women (of color) but only because the particular standpoints of this collection of women profoundly reflect and articulate the relationship between the "powerful" and the "powerless;" both relative terms that constitute the LIVED reality of most everyone. And that, in itself is, in my opinion relatable and worth learning enough to read.

This book is also about consciousness, empowerment, resistance, and resilience; a possible source of validation and inspiration for those who may not have been handed any.

In response to the last reviewer, it is always interesting how the very people who perpetuate racism and the oppression of people of color are the first to denouce as 'racist' any argument against (or God forbid, anger towards) the system that keeps colored people oppressed. The previous reviewer should consider the notion that maybe these women didn't need anything but the experience of their own lives to know that the world is stacked against them as women of color. He should also wonder if his inability to believe the pain of others is a reflection of his inability to acknowledge the privledge he takes for granted. The is an excellent book, and will be an excellent read for anyone with an open mind or a capacity to listen to the feelings and ideas of others.

"Colonize This!" is a thought-provoking, important Third Wave feminist youth of color reader powerfully documenting the myriad ways that the politics of gender, race, class, sexuality and disability interesect. I strongly recommend it for activist youth engaged in coalition building and anti-oppression work, especially young, able-bodied, middle-income, white, heterosexual men.

This collection is a tour de force. It slams open the gates of segregated and white-washed feminism, allowing these fearce writers --and the millions of girls and women like them-- to claim their rightful space in the women's intellectual/spiritual/political movement. Every woman --Latina, Black, Asian, Queer, Mother, Sister, Wife -- will find part of her own story in these vibrant pages.

I would suggest that those who have rated this book poorly may want to start with "Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America"