Feminista Jones

I'm not sure how I want to rate this book. It's always hard when a book doesn't turn out to be what you expect, not bad but not what you picked it up for. I expected to read about modern Black feminists and I did, but not as much as I'd hoped and expected. I'd say this book is 50% memoir and of the remaining 50%, half of that is about Black women leading the way in making Twitter a viable and vibrant digital space and half is about Black feminism in that space. All of which is in the title, but I didn't pick the book up expecting only a quarter of it to be directly about Black feminists.

Having said all of that, I thought the book was interesting. I am a white woman and a feminist. I try very hard to be aware of my privilege and avoid being a White Feminist. But privilege has an insidious way of being invisible until something is pointed out to you. So, in this way, I thought the book useful, chapter 10 (Mammy 2.0) especially.

All in all, not a bad read just not the one I was looking for.… (altro)

(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book for review from the publisher.)

DNF at 42%.

"Imagine if Audre Lorde had access to Twitter in the 1970s and could share her now-famous and revered quotations in real time—what might that have done for the Black feminist movement of the time? If Angela Davis’s speeches of the 1970s could be broadcast via Periscope and seen by tens of thousands a mere forty-eight hours after she delivered them? Imagine if Marsha P. Johnson could have shared video from the Stonewall Riots the way Johnetta Elzie shared videos from Ferguson. Where might Black women be today, in our fight for equality and liberation, if these iconic thought leaders, artists, and activists were influencers in the way we understand them to be in our time?"

"Interestingly enough, I changed the name of my site to FeministaJones.com riiight before Melissa Harris-Perry featured my video about mental health on her weekend MSNBC news, culture, and politics show. Imagine her having to say, “Feminista Jones, who blogs at Knob-Slobbing Feminism,” on air."

Initially I was psyched to win a copy of Reclaiming Our Space through Library Thing's Early reviewers program; I've been following the author on twitter for some time and her thoughts on race, class, gender, and sexuality are both thought-provoking and highly entertaining. But, by the time a copy finally arrived via snail mail, life had gotten in the way and it got pushed to the bottom of my TBR pile. I finally picked it up a year later, not so much because I wanted to read it - things have been tough lately and escapism is the name of the lit game, at least for me - but rather because I felt obligated to give it a try.

Reclaiming Our Space is one part history lesson, one part manifesto, illuminating the many ways in which Black women - activists, academics, professionals, influencers, artists, and politicians - have utilized the internet (particularly twitter) to amplify their voices, too often minimized, silenced, and ignored pre-digital age. While many people like to dismiss the internet as not "real," Jones shows how hashtag campaigns like #SayHerName, #BringBackOurGirls, #MeuPrimeiroAssedio (“My first harassment”), #DisabledAndCute, #DisabilitySoWhite, #GirlsLikeUs, #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, #BlackGirlsAre Magic, #PrettyPeriod, #WhyIStayed, #RapeCultureIsWhen, and #YouOKSis have effected changed IRL. She also details how Black women pioneered tricks like threading tweets and using reaction GIFs to further discourse, and launched influencer gigs into steady streams of revenue.

Unfortunately, I had to DNF Reclaiming Our Space - it took me most of a month to read the first half, and I just don't have anything left in me. I need a shot of feminist escapist fiction, stat. This isn't to suggest that Reclaiming Our Space is a bad read, just not the right one for me right now. I'm going to stick a pin in it and hopefully return at a later date. I'm especially intrigued by Chapter 11, at least in part because Jones references the Combahee River Collective early in the book, and I've love to learn more.

Table of Contents
--------------

INTRODUCTION
It All Started When . . .

CHAPTER 1
#BlackFeminism 101

CHAPTER 2
#BlackFeminism 102

CHAPTER 3
Thread!

CHAPTER 4
The Influencers

CHAPTER 5
Talk Like Sex

CHAPTER 6
Black Girls Are Magic

CHAPTER 7
Twenty-First-Century Negro Bedwenches

CHAPTER 8
Black Mamas Matter

CHAPTER 9
“I’ve Always Been Good to You People!”

CHAPTER 10
Mammy 2.0: Black Women Will Not Save You, So Stop Asking

CHAPTER 11
Combahee Lives

Acknowledgments
Notes… (altro)

In this book, author, social worker, and activist Feminista Jones gives the reader a much-needed comprehensive look at Black feminism in the age of social media. Jones comes at this topic from her personal experience as a queer Black woman who has been extremely influential in the worlds of Twitter, blogging, and online communication. Much of the book reads as a memoir focused on her personal interactions and experiences, and Jones enriches the narrative by pulling together historical perspectives and raising up the voices of other women and feminists in her circles, including a handful of interviews sprinkled throughout the book. Her historic perspective is especially valuable in her discussions of intersectionality and activism, including the past and ongoing failures of White feminism to include Black voices as well as the dismissal of Black feminism by the civil rights movement. Of particular interest is her examination of Black Twitter and how the ways that Black women have used this platform to share their experiences and feelings, connect with one another, push the functionality of the platform forward (through hashtags, threads, and reaction gifs), and (all too often) fight off the trolls and watch their creations be co-opted and monetized. Some chapters are stronger than others, but this is a compelling read overall and a great resource for folks who need an overview of Black feminism in general, and a primer on what is happening in the on-line world of Black feminism today.… (altro)