Published in 2016, this book and its contents are still quite relevant four years later.
Dates read: June 3 - June 18
Genre(s): nonfiction, interview, speech, essay
Rating: 4/5 stars (really liked it)
I really liked how Dr. Davis connected the various struggles of Black people, women, Palestinians, etc., showing that there is a global consciousness surrounding injustice and freedom movements. Intersectionality is key within movements and fights for justice around the world because no one holds a single identity.
I love how she touched on Black women in freedom movements because I learned in my college courses that they truly were the driving forces behind the Civil Rights Movement. When we think of the leaders of the movement, we often automatically imagine MLK. We also imagine Rosa Parks, but virtually no other important women, including the many women working diligently behind the scenes as well as people like Claudette Colvin, who was actually the first to give up her seat.
Dr. Davis said, "I never tire of urging people to remember that it wasn't a single individual or two who created that movement...it was largely women within collective contexts, Black women, poor Black women who were maids, washerwomen, and cooks. These were the people who collectively refused to ride the bus." Without these unknown and forgotten Black women, the movement would not have existed. There is not a single person who is able to bring freedom to the oppressed all on their own. This was one major point that stood out to me.
For several years, I have been for the abolition of capital punishment, and in the last couple of years, I have seen that imprisonment is an institution that needs to be abolished in some form or another. "These forms of punishment do not work when you consider that the majority of people who are in prison are there because society has failed them, because they've had no access to education or jobs or housing or health care." I have been researching "defund the police," and wrote a blog post about what it means here if you're interested.
Some of the speeches do seem repetitive, but, of course, she is speaking to different audiences. There was some variation due to that. It also helped in a way, because reading about similar issues more than once let me further assess how they were connected and why they were continually being brought up.
Overall, I gained a few new insights and learned about people and events I had not previously known about. I had to look up who Herman Wallace was and was appalled at how the "justice" system had treated him for something so small. This book is only a start in learning about the collective freedom movement, and it shows that the struggle for freedom is not singular or localized to a specific area. We are all a part of each other's struggle, globally.