Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

Mikki Kendall

Feb 2020 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“The fights against hunger, homelessness, poverty, health disparities, poor schools, homophobia, transphobia, and domestic violence are feminist fights. Kendall offers a feminism rooted in the livelihood of everyday women.” —Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of  How to Be an Antiracist, in The Atlantic

“One of the most important books of the current moment.”—Time
 
“A rousing call to action... It should be required reading for everyone.”—Gabrielle Union, author of We’re Going to Need More Wine


A potent and electrifying critique of today’s feminist movement announcing a fresh new voice in black feminism

Today's feminist movement has a glaring blind spot, and paradoxically, it is women. Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki Kendall, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. All too often, however, the focus is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few. That feminists refuse to prioritize these issues has only exacerbated the age-old problem of both internecine discord and women who rebuff at carrying the title. Moreover, prominent white feminists broadly suffer from their own myopia with regard to how things like race, class, sexual orientation, and ability intersect with gender. How can we stand in solidarity as a movement, Kendall asks, when there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others?

In her searing collection of essays, Mikki Kendall takes aim at the legitimacy of the modern feminist movement, arguing that it has chronically failed to address the needs of all but a few women. Drawing on her own experiences with hunger, violence, and hypersexualization, along with incisive commentary on reproductive rights, politics, pop culture, the stigma of mental health, and more, Hood Feminism delivers an irrefutable indictment of a movement in flux. An unforgettable debut, Kendall has written a ferocious clarion call to all would-be feminists to live out the true mandate of the movement in thought and in deed.

Ratings and reviews

EXCELLENT READ. THANK YOU! As I scan the reviews I'm reminded that feminism is complex, diverse, convergent and get this RACIST AF. Why should black/Native women be separate in their fight (against the male ruling class) to be seen as equally human as both feminist and ideologically? White privilege has made for intra-party war amongst those they oppress. By enacting a psychosis in us all so we seek that which is artificial...CONSENSUS. Why should her experience be linear or even schematically the same as the next woman? It can't and that's why she is so captivating as a writer. Even when I don't have a cepheid variable to guage the distance between my masculinity and the feminism that it was built from, but I do see the proper transit of feminism orbiting in front of the star of capitalism and the immense force it (capitalism/sun) has had on feminism.

It's a very challenging read, especially if you pick up this book thinking that it's just going to be preaching to the choir. Yet, it also feels like a call to activism

She make a lot of good points in this book about white feminists and gun violence.

About the author

Mikki Kendall is a New York Times bestselling writer, speaker, and blogger whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, TIME, Salon, Ebony, Essence, and elsewhere. An accomplished public speaker, she has discussed race, feminism, violence in Chicago, tech, pop culture, and social media on The Daily Show, MSNBC, NPR, Al Jazeera's The Listening Post, BBC's Women's Hour, and Huffington Post Live, as well as at universities across the country. In 2017, she was awarded Best Food Essay from the Association of Food Journalists for her essay on hot sauce, Jim Crow, and Beyoncé. She is also the author of Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists: A Graphic History of Women's Fight for Their Rights and a co-editor of the Locus-nominated anthology Hidden Youth, as well as a part of the Hugo-nominated team of editors at Fireside Magazine. A veteran, she lives in Chicago with her family.