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. An Entropy Magazine
Best Nonfiction Book of 2020-2021,The Trouble with White Women
gives feminists today the tools to fight for the flourishing of all.