Too Many White People Challenge: Thoughts on Finding Authors of Color

I’ve decided to do something I’m calling the “Too Many White People Challenge,” named for the simple fact that when I look at my bookshelves, there are far too many white people looking back at me.  When I think about the books I read in school, books I’ve read for fun, books I’ve read for research, the vast majority are unsurprisingly by white authors.  If I want to be an effective advocate against racism and for structural change, then I’d better start reading points of view that don’t come from white people!

The challenge is simple: no white authors for the next 100 books I read.  I’ve made a couple of exceptions for books I’m asked to review and for books I have to read for work, but otherwise, no white authors for the next 100 books.  If you’d like to join me, you can do so at this Goodreads group.  I’m not going to be blogging a lot about this experience here on Radically Queer, because I don’t want it to turn into a self-congratulatory thing, but I’ll check in from time to time.  The Goodreads group is where I’ll be a bit more wordy.

I want to start by sharing some observations I’ve made while looking for books to read.  These are mostly what I expected, but I’m sharing them here in case they’re thoughts that haven’t occurred to some:

1. It’s not necessarily that easy to identify an author of color.  For the sake of efficiency, I had to take some shortcuts that mean I’m missing some of the authors of color on my to-read list.  I went through all my Goodreads to-read shelf, checking off authors of color.  These were almost always authors that I already know, authors with a non-Western name, or books about a race-related subject.  I then went through for the latter two to get rid of the white authors that snuck in.  I’m necessarily going to be missing a lot of authors of color with whom I’m unfamiliar, who are writing about topics other than race.
2. Reading authors of color doesn’t necessarily mean you’re learning about race.  I kept this challenge simple because my goal wasn’t to learn about race, but simply to take white perspectives out of my reading for a while.  Some of the books I’m reading are novels, some are non-fiction, some are even self-help.  There are a few really silly looking chick-lit novels in there.
3. Race is (surprise!) a socially constructed category.  We all know this, but it’s interesting when compiling a list like this to see the principle in action.  I had to ask myself what the goal really was, and decide where I would draw the line for “of color.”  I decided not to include Israeli Jewish authors, for example.  I also decided not to include Turkish authors, though that was mostly for personal reasons, since I’ve studied Turkish and am pretty familiar with the culture.  I did include authors from other parts of the Arab world, but it’s possible I’ve accidentally snuck some white people in there, since you can’t actually look at someone and tell whether or not they’re white, so if a white person is from an Arab country I might not realize.

I’m looking forward to the challenge, despite the difficulties in coming up with a very precise definition of which authors “count.”  I hope some of you will join me?

Radical Reading: A Queer and Pleasant Danger

Kate Bornstein’s memoir, A Queer and Pleasant Danger, out today, is perhaps not what you would expect from the memoir of a white transfeminine person in her mid-sixties.  Unlike some of her peers, Bornstein wrestles with gender and sexuality questions that are often attributed to a younger generation.  This will be no surprise for readers of Bornstein’s earlier Gender Outlaw, but it is refreshing in a genre that is often overwrought with medical history, descriptions of a second puberty, and marital drama.

In fact, a large chunk of A Queer and Pleasant Danger isn’t about a trans topic at all—or at least, not a topic that most would consider trans.  Bornstein chronicles her years in Scientology, from the anorexic and suicidal young man that joined up in Colorado to the high-ranking Sea Org officer who lived on the flagship with L. Ron Hubbard himself in the 70s to the struggling young father trying to establish a presence for the Church in seedy New York neighborhoods.  This portion of the book is hilarious and quite readable, though not without the threads of emotion that you would expect from such a tale told in retrospect.

Bornstein frames the book as a letter to her daughter, Jessica, who was born in the New York years and who is still in the Church with her mother, estranged from Bornstein for the last thirty-two years.  The emotional element comes from the fact that this transgender memoir is really a deceptively simple father/daughter story.  Bornstein never got to be her father’s daughter, but her memories of Jessica are all as “Daddy.”

The transition element weaves throughout the story, from surreptitious crossdressing as a successful salesman for Scientology to transition and eventual rejection by many staunch trans women who couldn’t quite assimilate Bornstein’s notions of gender.  The initial appeal of Scientology for Bornstein was that thetans, the Church’s notion of soul or essential humanity, don’t have a gender.  When she took that flexibility beyond the Church, her trans female peers were evidently not amused.  Bornstein’s queerness, openness to less rigid ideas of gender, and forays into the lesbian SM scene kept her from fitting in with most trans women and cis lesbians and frankly, make it a more interesting book.  At the same time, there are elements of gender hierarchy in Bornstein’s relationships that will likely frustrate any second-wave feminist readers.

As a trans activist, I’ve never quite known what to think of Bornstein, who seems to weave between some really brilliant ideas about gender and some frustratingly foot-in-mouth moments.  But as a writer, she accomplishes the same thing she does as a performer: she draws you into her story and gives you a break from life to laugh along with her.  What she sometimes lacks when asked to be a trans spokesperson or a media pundit, she makes up for in her storytelling.  I would recommend this book to anyone who needs a brief and honest reprieve from the daily grind.

As Bornstein’s one-time partner, David, says, when she asks what she is, exactly—”You’re a mad, mad artist, my dear, and you are awfully cute.”

Radical Reading: Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?

When I started to read Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s newest collection, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? (AK Press), I had an idea of what to expect.  There are plenty of examples in the trans/queer blogosphere and Twittersphere of queer, trans, and/or non-binary individuals critiquing femme erasure and femme invisibility.  Usually these individuals are young, white, college-educated, and politically radical.  They (we) critique a mainstream gay culture that attacks or erases femme expressions of gender, is bothered or even disgusted by trans queers, and deifies masculinity.

Some of the contributions in this volume come from this group, but the collection as a whole takes on a different tenor, one that is sorely needed in our communities.  Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? focuses on brown bodies, on AIDS, on colonialism and nationalism, and on the intersections between these themes.  These essays are about love and fear–the potential of queer creativity and the impact of a faggot-coded epidemic.

This volume asks us to question our fears–not only of femininity but of brown bodies, trans bodies, poverty, drugs, open sexuality, terrorism, and AIDS.  The essays engage explicitly with sex, linking queer desire to ideas of nationality, safety, and acceptability.  The authors ask us to build a political discourse around sex and desire and to see the potential in brown, femme, and/or diseased bodies that the collective mainstream gay imagination fears and has forgotten because of the terrifying possibility of death.

Some of the most controversial essays challenge the idea of “safe sex” and ask us to consider barebacking as a sexual practice.  How do we pose bodies and sex as dirty or clean?  The public health discourse around AIDS jibes well with a national rhetoric of individual responsibility–you are either safe/clean or you are not, you are a citizen or a terrorist, you are with us or against us–and if you cross the line, it is your fault.

“The ‘risk reduction’ we practiced often meant avoiding intimacy with the very people we needed in order to overcome generations of internalized shame; we ended up limiting the types of connections that had historically led to personal health and community well-being.” –Chris Bartlett, “Levity and Gravity”

Some of the authors in this volume suggest solutions to the status quo that are wrapped up in sex, desire, cruising culture, creativity, and femininity.  These solutions also challenge the white, middle class, masculine gay norm.  Ali Abbas, for example, tells the story of a white colleague accusing him of “playing into” his own Middle Eastern culture while simultaneously ignoring the queerness of some Middle Eastern cultures.  Masculinity here is linked to nationalism and citizenship, which in turn is linked to the mainstream gay American culture’s focus on marriage (a right linked to citizenship) rather than human rights, immigration, sexuality, or poverty.

Several essays challenge the assumption of norms, usually presented in a “good vs. bad” binary, around desireability and sexuality.  CA Conrad wants to know why fat men are assumed to be undesireable, while Philip Patston asks the same thing about disabled bodies.  Patston’s story of going to his therapist and initially assuming, when told that things would be different for him because of his disability, that gay men would see him as a rare and desireable potential partner, challenges the assumption that normal desire focuses on able bodies–or on white ones, thin ones, cis ones, or masculine ones.  Discussions of creativity in the early AIDS movement and of the good things about HIV-positive sex challenge readers to consider whether even an “infected body” is necessary less desireable.  The gay community is used to the idea of collective trauma (ie, AIDS) vs. collective Pride, but why does Pride have to be found principally in middle class white bodies?  Why not in a community of “Others”–brown, trans, pos, disabled, queer faggots?

I agree, at least in part, with the criticisms of the mainstream public health response to AIDS.  There are no “good gays” and “bad gays.”  The community, such as it is, would be a better place if we consciously engaged with disease, with sex, and with the creative potential of our fringes.  I agree with Patrick “Pato” Hebert that our power lies in sex and storytelling, and that these things are linked.  “We make ourselves through storytelling.  We reproduce the queer power of ourselves through our sex.”

The narratives in this collection are a first step in looking at ourselves as sexual, positive, worthy wholes and as a powerful potential community of activists and artists.  As Nick Clarkson explains in his story about a gay cis man who is unwilling to go home with him because of his trans body, we are not solely defined by our histories.  It is important to recognize queer people both collectively and individually as a whole–through our histories, our identities, our bodies, and our stories.

Radical Reading: When We Were Outlaws

Jeanne Córdova’s memoir When We Were Outlaws: a memoir of Love & Revolution, recently released from Spinsters Ink, fills an important gap in the existing first-person accounts of the history of gay and lesbian liberation, but suffers from an unfortunately inconsistent tone.  When students take up gay or lesbian history in the US, the starting point is often the Stonewall Riots.  The picture of gay and lesbian liberation has a decidedly East Coast slant, or it is told more generally in the context of national movements–homophiles, gay liberation, lesbian feminism, and so on.  Córdova’s strength is in the details she provides on the day-to-day life of lesbian activism in 1970s Los Angeles, centered around the strike against the Gay Community Services Center.  Her weakness lies in a tendency towards melodrama and an inflation of her own importance in the broader story.

The reason why accounts such as Martin Duberman’s Stonewall are so gripping and effective is that the narrator or the individual subjects of the story are portrayed as mere players in a bigger picture.  The power of those individuals in the narrative comes from how subtly their story is told.  Córdova has an amazing story–the details of the relationships between gay men and lesbians in LA at the time, the struggle between gay liberation and labor movements, and Córdova’s journalistic relationship with “her Nazi” are particularly interesting.  There is a good balance between broader themes and particularly interesting historical snapshots in the book.  Where it starts to come apart is Córdova’s tendency to drop into melodrama in describing her personal romantic relationships, non-monogamy in the movement, and her own role as an activist.  The dialogue doesn’t come alive, and whenever Córdova focuses directly on analyzing herself at the time or her role in the movement, the subtlety that helps a reader relate to a narrator is lost.  The dynamics of butch and femme in the 1970s LA lesbian community and the trend of non-monogamy are interesting, but the moralistic tone that weaves through the narrative will make it uncomfortable for some.

I would recommend this account for those who are particularly interested in first-person history of lesbian liberation on the West Coast, but with reservations.  A shorter, more tightly controlled narrative would be more effective in communicating this particular story.

 

Radical Reading: What You Really Really Want

For this Radical Reading column, we’re doing something a bit different.  I was lucky enough to be part of the group that workshopped Jaclyn Friedman’s What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety.  This groundbreaking workbook takes the lessons learned about rape culture from the Yes Means Yes anthology and helps the reader take sexuality into his/her/hir own hands with practical guidance on sex, sexuality, and enthusiastic consent.  One of my favorite things about the book is how it breaks down our culture’s sexual scripts and encourages us to define our own sexuality–a skill that few of us are taught otherwise. I’ve invited Jaclyn, and some of the other folks from the workshop, to stop by Radically Queer on the WYRRW blog tour for a roundtable discussion on sexual agency and defining our own sexualities.  

 

Avory: Thanks so much for stopping by, everyone!  I wanted to start things off by just saying a little bit about my experience with using through the book to help define my sexuality, and hear where you’re all coming from.

For me, what was really useful in going through the exercises is they tend to be open-ended.  At one point, for example, we were asked to just list the things we do and don’t want when it comes to sex.  I ended up listing things I want that seem sort of inane, like being fed by hand, or having my hair petted, or a hand on my throat, and then listing common sexual things I don’t want, like having my breasts touched.  Coming up with that list from scratch was new for me because most of what I’ve learned about sex, even from comprehensive, liberal sources, is that there’s a straight script, or a gay script, or a lesbian script.  As a genderqueer person, no one ever gave me an appropriate script, so part of what I’ve done with this book is thought long and hard about how I define pleasure.  A lot of that has to do with things like food, and sensation, and power dynamics, that aren’t included in traditional “sexual” activities.  I’m still struggling with how to communicate these things to a partner, but it’s a big liberating step to climb out of the box of what’s generally seen as “sexual,” and often based on gender expectations.

Radical Reading: Embodied Resistance

I read Embodied Resistance, an anthology that just came out from Vanderbilt Press (editors Chris Bobel and Samantha Kwan), with a certain degree of skepticism in mind.  As a friend reminded me when he read the Amazon blurb, people are often perceived to be resisting when they are simply living their lives.  Transgender people, for example, are seen as “deviant” whether they want to be or not.  It’s simply the cost of appearing to be different in a society that can often be very cookie-cutter about its body norms.I was pleasantly surprised to find that many of the chapters in this volume did, in fact, tackle the question of intentional resistance.  A chapter on the bear subculture among gay men, for example, notes that “[t]he degree of intentionality behind the embodied protests of bear and big men’s groups varies.”  In a short essay on how she came to write about fat sex, Hanne Blank notes that “[a]s I wrote I began to realize that I have a knack for pointing out things that to me are glaringly obvious but that other people seem to have a hard time spotting–that I exist, that people like me exist, that there are millions and millions of fat people in the world, and despite all rumors to the contrary, most have love and sex lives.”  Embodied Resistance does, then, at least in some of it chapters, acknowledge that “resistors” may simply be living their lives, and that the body as a protest may not be intentional but rather constructed through others’ perceptions of “normal” bodies.  Ideally, I would’ve liked to have more discussion of what it’s like to be in this situation, rather than simple acknowledgement, but it is a first step.

I did find it interesting that in some cases, those perceived as resisting were actually using a group of “resistors” to normalize their bodies.  In many groups made up of non-normative body types, the members talk about the safety of that group space, whether it’s roller derby girls embracing their size and propensity towards “unladylike” injuries or women with body hair talking about their experiences in the somewhat artificial setting of a classroom experiment.  This first chapter of the book on female body hair was actually the most relatable for me, as a female-perceived person who does not shave underarms or legs.  For many women, this is an intentional form of protest, but for many of us it is simply a natural state, and others’ attempts to define us as intentional resistors can be uncomfortable.

On the whole, Embodied Resistance is a good overview of a wide range of topics related to non-normative or resisting bodies.  The book does tend towards mostly white subcultures in the US, but there are exceptions.  There is also a fair balance in documenting the experiences of different genders.  From belly dancing while pregnant to the female dominatrix to the transgender “bathroom question,” the book will prompt plenty of interesting classroom discussions.

Note: I was bothered by the inclusion of a chapter on pro-ana, and need to mention this as a trigger warning for some readers.  The authors of this chapter acknowledge the problematic nature of the movement, but it nonetheless may be very hard to read–it was for me.  

Radical Reading: Sister Citizen by Melissa Harris-Perry

Radical Reading is a column where I review books of particular interest to a queer, feminist, radical audience.  If you have a book that you would like me to review or would like to put me on the list of reviewers for your press, please contact me at judithavory [at] gmail.com.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I’ve been a huge fan of Melissa Harris-Perry since she first started appearing as a guest on The Rachel Maddow Show.  She has a tremendous voice and is particularly agile at synthesizing complex information about politics, current events, and social science in an accessible way.

That said, I’m not surprised that I enjoyed her newest book, Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America.  The book uses a slightly different framework than usual for looking at black women’s struggles in the US: instead of focusing on simple unequal distribution of resources, Harris-Perry uses a lens of misrecognition throughout the book.  Misrecognition, or failure to see black women as their full, authentic selves, is a denial of humanity that colors black women’s lives and prevents them from participating fully in public life.  Harris-Perry uses this lens to show how black women are denied full citizenship when they are recognized only as familiar stereotypes–the Mammy, the Jezebel, the Sapphire, and the self-sacrificing strong black woman.

Of course, none of these ideas are really new, but Harris-Perry presents them in a way that is very relevant for 2011.  She uses an interdisciplinary focus, blending polling data, her own focus groups, literature, current events, and politics.  Though there is some feminist influence at work, this book reads less like works I’ve read by black feminist authors focusing specifically on the feminist lens and more like general non-fiction.

Hurricane Katrina is a theme that weaves throughout the arguments presented, along with the stories presented in literary classics like Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.  Harris-Perry also looks at current events like the Duke Lacrosse scandal and media coverage of Michelle Obama, but blends these discussions with historical comparison.  Black women’s history in the US is presented in a way that would be relevant for a high school or college student today, and I can see this book being used in the classroom.

The frame of misrecognition is particularly interesting, because it gets to the very humanity of the issue.  I particularly liked how Harris-Perry tackles the ideal of the “strong black woman,” putting this self-sacrificing, superwoman figure next to other stereotypes and revealing the personal and political problems it creates.  Though the strong black woman is a positive character, she too is a misrecognition, and Harris-Perry posits that this idea of what black women should be may lead some black women towards political conservatism through a belief in individual responsibility.

This isn’t a primer on black feminism, or a treatment of all the historical issues related to black women in America.  But it is a particularly skillful treatment of some of the issues black women in America face today, seen through the lens of public misrecognition of their true, complex selves.

Radical Reading: Freeing Ourselves

The following is part of a new regular feature called Radical Reading, which will come out roughly once a month.  I’ll be reviewing books of particular interest to a queer, feminist, radical audience.  If you have a book that you would like me to review or would like to put me on the list of reviewers for your press, please contact me at judithavory [at] gmail.com.

Freeing Ourselves: A Guide to Health and Self Love for Brown Bois, put out by the Brown Boi Project, is a guide to healthy living unlike anything I’ve seen, but quite like guides I’ve imagined.

Focused on MoC (masculine-of-center) people of color, Freeing Ourselves is an accessible, engaging guide to overall health presented in a unique format.  The educational material is interspersed with powerful stories, poetry, and photographs that reflect a wide range of racial and gender identities.

The guide takes self as a starting point, and does an excellent job of framing self in a way that includes, rather than excludes.  It presents self-awareness as a way to fight back against the lack of medical knowledge or outright hostility that many MoC people face.

I particularly liked how this guide acknowledged right up front the way healthy masculinity is defined by the colonial oppressor.  I believe that one of the huge problems marginalized communities face in terms of health care is that racial identity, gender identity, and self-actualization are all problematized.  Medical transition, for example, isn’t available without the othering diagnosis of “Gender Identity Disorder.”  Women are framed as hysterical, black men as dangerous.  The medical establishment doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but is part of an institutional framework that uses gender as a weapon.

When recognizing common threats in people’s lives, the guide lists common mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety alongside structural problems like oppression and abuse.  This guide does the best job I’ve seen so far at acknowledging that structural harms and internal “illnesses” operate in similar and interconnected ways to bring a person down and threaten that person’s health.  It also acknowledges how Western society harms relationships and connections, encouraging men to compete rather than to embrace each other.

There are a number of practical tools and charts included, such as guidance on when to see a health care provider and information about the risk of STIs for different races and genders/sexualities.  The information about sexual and reproductive health is particularly useful, since many health care providers are completely unaware of safe sex practices and risks for non-heterosexual or non-cisgender people.  The information on STIs here is not only focused on penetration, for example.  There is plenty of helpful advice about gynecological exams for those who do not identify as female, and about the risk of breast/chest cancer.  In addition, this guide provides detailed information about transition and the different options available.

I also found the information about pregnancy and forming a family particularly to be done particularly well.  There aren’t any assumptions made about whether and how MoC people might want to form a family.  The guide acknowledges the creativity of individuals to form families in a multitude of ways, as well as providing information about pregnancy and birth options.

The last section, while perhaps not as focused on HAES as I am, did a pretty good job at acknowledging and accepting different body types.  The holistic approach to food and physical practice has a strong ayurvedic influence, with information about “cooling” and “warming” foods.  The suggestions for exercise are varied, though limited attention is paid to people with disabilities.  Finally, this section includes specific information about the physical effects of chest binding and explains STP (stand-to-pee) devices.

Overall, I would recommend this book for any MoC person of color who has been frustrated by the healthcare system.  I also think this book would be an excellent tool for providers, who often seem to be undereducated on some of this issues covered, and for gender non-conforming people generally.  As someone who is neither masculine or feminine of center, but rather a blob off there in the corner somewhere, I still found quite a bit in this guide that is relevant to me.  The guide is available from the Brown Boi Project on a sliding scale, with $20 being the value of the book itself and the rest going to the project as a tax-deductible donation.

Review: Captive Genders

I received a review copy of Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex (coming out this month from AK Press) at the perfect time.  I’ve been frustrated by the growing focus in recent months on two of the things I care least about when it comes to queer rights, the two things that the mainstream LGBT movement seems most adamant about: marriage and the military.  It’s impossible to get away from those two topics if you’re following LGBT news, but this book also turned my focus to another problem–that the most-covered “alternative” issues, those focused on individual rights, are still not the most important priority.  Employment and housing discrimination are important but they focus on the middle class.  Hate crimes are a problem, but the kneejerk response of hate crimes legislationtries to solve that problem by using the same harmful official system that terrorizes queer and trans people on a daily basis.

I would recommend this book to any activist, but especially to white, middle-class activists in the “LGBT movement.”  The pieces in this anthology encourage us to get away from the white, middle-class idea of “safety.”  Strong sentences for hate crimes don’t make us safer.  Nor do most of the priorities of LGBT rights organizations.  It is only from a privileged position that we can even believe that there might be a safe, mainstream, assimilated place to work and live.

Conservatives and moderates in the movement, and outside of it, want you to feel safe.  It’s another story of us versus them: it helps those who are disgusted by trans people of color, by poor queer youth, by public queer sexualities, to tug the most powerful and heavily funded segments of the LGBT population away into a zone of “safety” and assimilation.  Of course, many queer and trans people don’t have that luxury, and it’s foolish to think that any of us really do.  Queer and trans people in prison, juveniles in the child “welfare” system, immigrants, sex workers, the homeless, and other marginalized groups are often victims of a cruel and unusual system that targets minorities and encourages oppression.

Review: Feminism for Real

I’ve been struggling for over a month to write this review, not because I didn’t like the book–it’s an amazing anthology, in fact, and I think it should be a mandatory part of the feminist/activist canon–but because as an activist and a writer, my mode is always “do, do, do.”  “Here’s how to make change.”  “Here are five things you can do to improve your world.”  “This is my experience and why it’s relevant to you.”  This review isn’t going to be like that.

Feminism for Real is a challenge to white feminist academics and activists to stop doing.  It’s hard for a lot of us to listen actively and compassionately.  It’s hard to say “I am wrong, my ancestors were wrong, and I cannot fix it.”  I’ve known this for a while, but it’s such a depressing thought, such a disempowering thought, that it’s hard to know what to do with it.  And maybe that’s the point.

This is not our battle.  What white feminists can do is show some respect, be conscious of history, make space for indigenous feminists and other people of color to do good work, and make an effort in our own communities to stop harming others.  We need to recognize how colonialism and imperialism continue to impact huge segments of our societies, and we need to constantly fight against these forces.  It isn’t our job to trumpet indigenous feminism, tell everyone about how the cool ideas native people have about women and other genders, or talk about how down we are with indigenous causes.  Indigenous people are doing that just fine on their own.  It is our job to address the pervasive, continuous, active harm we are perpetrating.

There are a thousand ways to do this.  Attack bad government policy, attack the media, attack educators who wouldn’t know education if it bit them in the face.  Support indigenous communities by giving indigenous people room to work–by speaking out against policies that take away land, culture, and freedom; by fighting rape; by challenging patriarchy.

As Robyn Maynard explains in her piece, “Fuck the Glass Ceiling!” it is important to recognize that the problem is not just marginalization but exploitation.  The harms discussed in this book are not historical, rather we continue to actively perpetrate them.  This is a structural problem for which we need to take collective responsibility.  Maynard explains:

Justice means–justice has to mean–an end to people deliberately destroying generations of cultures, of women, of lives, and of dignity, for personal political and economic gain.

We can do this, but only by taking responsibility and recognizing where law and policy actively harm rather than help.  I would encourage other white feminists and academics to join me in this self-critique, and in the challenge to listen without appropriating.  Feminism for Real provides a collection of essays, poetry, and interviews that are a great first step to listening.  You can find others on the web at Racialicious, SisterSong, INCITE!, and People of Color Organize, to name a few.

You can purchase your own copy of Feminism for Real from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.  The centre provided me with a copy of this book, and I was not otherwise compensated for this review.