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“Nowhere, however, would I write about what a good or bad feminist is or represents. My feminism does not require me to choose one of these issues as THE issue I need to focus on to be a proper feminist. How could it? At this point, women of color, some identifying as feminists and some not, have described the impact of race, class, gender, sexuality, and more on their lives in tracts, letters, art, and speeches for a century and more—from Mariah Stewart’s speeches to Anna Julia Cooper’s A Voice of the South to Barbara Smith and the founders of the Kitchen Table Press in 1980. In 1981, Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa published This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color with that same press, a historic and groundbreaking text. In it black feminist and radical women/womyn of color activists, artists, and scholars described the impact racism, sexism, patriarchy, classism, and settler-colonialism had on their lives. Their feminism was rooted in ways they encountered these systems of oppression on a daily basis and how their battle for their lives and right to live used strategies articulated by their mothers, grandmothers, and ancestresses around kitchen tables generations before. Art. Spirit. Organizing in each others kitchens, front yards, break rooms, playgrounds while children played, and classrooms. Neither the editors of the volume nor the contributors expressed perfect conceptions of feminism, community, or freedom—transphobia abounded, classism and internalized racism lingered—but there was never any doubt that as women, some straight, many queer, some of African descent, others of East and South Asian, Latinx, Latin-American, and Native American descent, fighting across a spectrum of issues was NECESSARY.”

Jessica Marie Johnson, “Fury and Joy: Feminism at the Kitchen Table,” November 14, 2014. Originally posted at Women Revamped.