The Trouble with White Women, Kyla Schuller
The Trouble with White Women, Kyla Schuller
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The Trouble with White Women
A Counterhistory of Feminism

Author: Kyla Schuller, Brittney Cooper

Narrator: Christine Lakin, Mela Lee

Unabridged: 11 hr 34 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/05/2021


Synopsis

An incisive history of self-serving white feminists and the inspiring women who’ve continually defied them

Women including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Sanger, and Sheryl Sandberg are commonly celebrated as leaders of feminism. Yet they have fought for the few, not the many. As award-winning scholar Kyla Schuller argues, their white feminist politics dispossess the most marginalized to liberate themselves.

In The Trouble with White Women, Schuller brings to life the two-hundred-year counter history of Black, Indigenous, Latina, poor, queer, and trans women pushing back against white feminists and uniting to dismantle systemic injustice. These feminist heroes such as Frances Harper, Harriet Jacobs, and Pauli Murray have created an anti-racist feminism for all. But we don’t speak their names and we don’t know their legacies. Unaware of these intersectional leaders, feminists have been led down the same dead-end alleys generation after generation, often working within the structures of racism, capitalism, homophobia, and transphobia rather than against them. 

Building a more just feminist politics for today requires a reawakening, a return to the movement’s genuine vanguards and visionaries. Their compelling stories, campaigns, and conflicts reveal the true potential of feminist liberation. The Trouble with White Women gives feminists today the tools to fight for the flourishing of all.
 

Reviews

Goodreads review by Alok on October 09, 2021

“White feminism” is a term to describe a political position, not an identity. White feminists maintain that equality for women comes from accessing racist-patriarchal institutions, not dismantling them. It’s not simply that white feminism has failed to include BIPOC women, it’s that “white feminism......more

Goodreads review by Jasmine on October 05, 2021

An important read for anyone interested in the history of feminism. Kyla Schuller traces the beginnings of white feminism along with its counterhistory of intersectional feminism, something which has been around for as long as white feminism. Each chapter examines a white feminist, as well as an int......more

Goodreads review by Lois on August 03, 2022

I quite liked this. I'd give this 4 stars I rounded it up to 5 to counteract the white supremacist reviews this seems to be causing. This gives a nice history of the problems with white feminism historically and today. Also gives you historical white feminist figures in all their problematic glory and i......more

Goodreads review by Genevieve on March 11, 2022

I feel a bit embarrassed to admit that it took until the last few years for me to really understand that feminism has not always encompassed all women. The Trouble With White Women continued to open my eyes to so many perspectives I had not always thought about as a white woman myself. If you want t......more

Goodreads review by Maddie on June 16, 2021

The Trouble with White Women is an amazingly important book that reveals the toxicity of white feminism. In each chapter, Schuller takes one white feminist and compares her to an intersectional feminist of the same generation. Even though each chapter is packed with rich information about these wome......more