![]() ![]() And she has been one of the biggest victims of this failure to love women among black feminists. One of feminism’s biggest failures is its failure to insist that feminism is, first and foremost, about truly, deeply, and unapologetically loving women.īeyoncé gets this lesson about feminism better than most. If black women don’t figure out how to love other black women (cis and trans, queer and straight, and everything in between), it will be the death of us. ![]() When my patriarchal nuclear fantasy eluded me and a whole generation of overachieving black women, it is my girls who have celebrated my successes, showered me with compliments, taken me out on dates, traveled the world with me, supported me through big life decisions, and showed up when disasters struck. Feminism helped me to recognize that there were other versions of a life to want. But it’s dangerous to get them in a context where you have no analysis of how and why those are your desires. So part of my success story involved having it all - the house, the car, the career, the pretty man, and the kids. I had nuclear-family dreams because I had bought into the notion that the way I grew up - in a single-parent home, with a mismatched family of aunties and uncles and cousins and grandparents bringing up the rear - was not optimal. We wonder why young men hate women and, sometimes, the sad truth is that their mamas and aunts and sisters act as an arm of the patriarchy by parroting the refrain that “girls simply can’t be trusted.” ![]() I worry about a world in which black girls on their way to becoming women are taught to distrust women. I wanted friends to snicker, giggle, and pass notes with, to share secrets with. It has always rung false to me, maybe because the introverted parts of me had absolutely no interest in spending sustained time fake-grinning at people with whom I couldn’t be my whole self. I came up in an era when black girls loudly proclaimed that they didn’t have friends. I give the side eye to any black woman who doesn’t have other black women friends, to any woman who is prone to talk about how she relates better to men than to women, to anyone who goes on and on about how she “doesn’t trust females.” If you say fuck the patriarchy but you don’t ride for other women, then it might be more true that the patriarchy has fucked you, seducing you with the belief that men care more about your well-being than women do. This book argues that ultimately feminism, friendship, and faith in one's own superpowers are all we really need to turn things right side up again.Ī BEST/MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2018 BY: Glamour Friendships with black girls have always saved my life. In Brittney Cooper's world, neither mean girls nor fuckboys ever win. And it took another intervention, this time staged by one of her homegirls, to turn Brittney into the fierce feminist she is today. When Cooper learned of her grandmother's eloquent rage about love, sex, and marriage in an epic and hilarious front-porch confrontation, her life was changed. It reminds women that they don't have to settle for less. It's what makes Michelle Obama an icon.Įloquent rage keeps us all honest and accountable. It's what makes Beyoncé's girl power anthems resonate so hard. Black women's eloquent rage is what makes Serena Williams such a powerful tennis player. But Cooper shows us that there is more to the story than that. In the Black feminist tradition of Audre Lorde, Brittney Cooper reminds us that anger is a powerful source of energy that can give us the strength to keep on fighting.įar too often, Black women's anger has been caricatured into an ugly and destructive force that threatens the civility and social fabric of American democracy. So what if it's true that Black women are mad as hell? They have the right to be. Michael Eric Dyson: " Cooper may be the boldest young feminist writing today.and she will make you laugh out loud." I was waiting and she has come in Brittney Cooper." Melissa Harris Perry: "I was waiting for an author who wouldn't forget, ignore, or erase us black girls. There is so much about her analysis that I relate to and grapple with on a daily basis as a Latina feminist."ĭamon Young: "Like watching the world's best Baptist preacher but with sermons about intersectionality and Beyoncé instead of Ecclesiastes." Joy Reid, Cosmopolitan: "A dissertation on black women's pain and possibility."Īmerica Ferrera: "Razor sharp and hilarious. Roxane Gay : "I encourage you to check out Eloquent Rage out now." Rebecca Solnit, The New Republic: "Funny, wrenching, pithy, and pointed." The Guardian ("Top 10 Books About Angry Women").Fast Company ("10 Best Books for Battling Your Sexist Workplace").Politico Magazine ("What the 2020 Candidates Are Reading This Summer").NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2018/ MENTIONED BY: The New York Public Library.An Emma Watson "Our Shared Shelf" Selection for November/December 2018 ![]()
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