WHITE FEMINISM is a necessary book in the modern feminist cannon. We've seen a lot of books about intersectional feminism lately written by authors of color and there will never be enough. But Koa Beck's analysis stands out. Deeply researched and brilliantly written, this is one of my new go-to recommendations for modern feminist books.

This book investigates how white feminism leaves a lot of groups behind and can ultimately do more damage. This was an interesting book, although the organization felt weird at points to me.

So good! Had me from the first sentence in the intro! Will be recommending this to everyone I know and going back for a deeper read.

think you’re an intersectional feminist? read WHITE FEMINISM to check! Koa Beck is a white-passing & straight-passing queer woman of color. her 2021 book WHITE FEMINISM is really abt extending beyond white feminism. she covers an extraordinarily wide range of topics: fat inclusion, trans inclusion, gender/race/class & their intersection, capitalism, performativity, transnational contexts, women’s colleges, & so much more! WHITE FEMINISM provides some red flags to identify white feminism. if a movement places too much faith in an individual, that’s white feminism bc it doesn’t dismantle anything structural. And that’s not to diminish individual women’s influence at all- it’s just to clarify that no individual can represent total progress. indeed, a central theme is that structural constraints must be central to an inclusive, intersectional feminism. overemphasis on individual choice marks another red flag for white feminism. if you’re a white ~middle-class educated feminist like me, chances are a lot of your past feminism has been Very White. I hope to embrace a more intersectional feminism moving forward in the future. at the same time, however, this book makes clear that only acknowledging privilege is woefully inadequate. one quotation from WHITE FEMINISM can help to summarize most of the book: “the future isn’t female- it’s gender-fluid.”

Koa Beck's White Feminism clearly and definitively outlines what white feminism is (and does), and why it's so pernicious. She uses both historical and contemporary examples to illustrate how white feminism works to uphold oppressive systems and keep the emphasis on white, heteronormative, cisgender, white collar concerns at the expense of the working class, BIPOC, trans people, and all other marginalized peoples. I kept finding myself mentally making a list of everything I wanted to do further research on or refer back to. (I definitely need to pick this one up in print.) I particularly liked that Beck talked about what can be done (and while it's not much on an individual level, collective action shows the way forward). The way she breaks down the insidious nature of white feminism also makes it easier to recognize and then resist. This book should be required reading.

White Feminism by Koa Beck took me a while to get through because it is quite dense, but it is also a very powerful and timely read. I always appreciate when you can tell an author has done her research, and this was clearly evident while reading White Feminism.

Intersectional feminism has been something that has been on my mind, especially during the past year. I enjoyed learning more about how we need to be inclusive when fighting for women's rights, which hasn't been something I have always been that aware of. Much of this book was eye-opening for me as a white woman and allowed me to truly see who was being left behind and who still is today.

The more we know the more we can grow and push for change. This book is one that will stick with me for a long time and I appreciate having the opportunity to read and review it.

{Thank you to Atria Books for my gifted copy.}

I can't read this on ebook so I went ahead and purchased it - it's too dense for an e-reader! The link to my YouTube review of the book, however, is below

As a warning, this book is dense. There is so much information jam packed into this book that it is nearly impossible to read large chunks at a time. However, this book is essential. Beck deep dives into the history of feminism from the white suffragettes who declined to permit Black suffragettes to walk with them in their march to the women fighting for gender equality in Latin America to the topic of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. A wholly intersectional piece of feminist literature, White Feminism does more than just declare that feminism needs to incorporate all groups of women (BIPOC, queer, trans, etc.). White Feminism denounces, well, white feminism. Beck calls out white feminists for the harm they (we) cause. She describes how white feminists used the labor and ideas of Black and Indigenous feminist leaders to further themselves while leaving behind those same leaders. My one issue with the book is minor and is more of a personal preference than anything else. I did not love how the author included paragraphs of quotes throughout the book. I would have preferred she paraphrased more and engaged with the quotes directly rather than simply including them. An intensely important and timely book for anyone who calls themselves a feminist.

Journalist Koa Beck has really done something special with White Feminism; what an incredibly thorough and powerful book. There's no doubt this was probably a challenging and daunting project given how expansive the topic is and how many different threads Beck weaves together (both historically as well as theoretically and practically), but it's an absolutely thought-provoking read and one that I hope more people will prioritize this year.

The takeaways in here are endless, and I have a number of sticky notes for passages I want to go back to, not to mention the numerous books, articles, and sources Beck cites that I'm checking out.

I also recommend reading this book in tandem with Mikki Kendall's Hood Feminism. They really complement one another in terms of subject matter.

Amazing book on the wats white feminism, includes POC and how white women can be allies. Extremely informative, and worth reading for all.

This book by Koa Beck is an excellent historical and modern look at American feminism over the last hundred years or so. Written from the perspective of a woman of color, this well-researched, poignant, and timely book brings to light issues that are quite frequently overlooked within the American feminist movement: that feminism and equality and the needs of women cannot be framed solely from the perspective of middle and upper-class, white collar women. Her writing forces the reader to reckon with the fact that, when we (I speak now as a white woman) talk about the women's rights movement here in the US, a few names come immediately to mind: Susan B Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. But were are the Frances Harpers? Where are the Audre Lordes?

Throughout the chapters of this book, we are introduced to the women who, by virtue of ethnic, religious, or racial backgrounds, are left out of the histories of the women's rights movement in the US. We are also introduced to the systemic, institutional, and intentional ways those marginalizations happen, and how even supposedly feminist acts, such as the MeToo movement and Lean In, still manage to leave behind those that do not easily fit into "white feminism."

The writing here is very clear, well-articulated, a joy to read, and uncomfortable. As it should be. Readers will learn, and they will think.

ATTENTION WHITE WOMEN: CONSIDER THIS YOUR ASSIGNED READING FOR 2021. THANK YOU. This book struck home for me on so many levels. The question of feminism is a tricky one for many women, and I myself have struggled with it throughout my life, going from complete ignorance (thanks Christian school) to rejection (ew Mom I'm not a feminist that's against God!) followed by this weird quasi-feministic state of confusion for a while there that I can now identify as a state of peak white feminism. When I finally un-ostriched myself (that's a whole other story in itself) and started to come into my political self, I knew the feminism that I was encountering was different than what I had experienced all my life, but I couldn't quite explicate how. Enter Koa Beck. This beautifully written, engaging, heart-rending, and intensively researched book is THE primer on white feminism and its insidious harm to and exclusion of communities of color and other marginalized genders. Instantly skyrocketing to the top of my All Time Faves list, White Feminism is an essential read for our time, an incisive critique of white feminism's support of systemic failure all the way up through the COVID-19 pandemic.

While this was a very uncomfortable read for me as a well-off white woman, it was also very necessary. I had had a vague idea that the early feminist and suffragette movements weren't inclusive in their endeavors, but I had no idea the extent of this exclusivity.

It was jarring to read about how women of color and people who didn't fit the rigid gender binary were are still are systematically shut out of the spaces and rights that elite white women claimed for themselves in the name of feminism. There were many stories to illustrate that what we view as "feminism" is actually just the agenda of already privileged white women, and it ignores the specific issues faced by Native women, other women of color, poor women, LGBT women. The interweaving of American history and the author's personal history was engaging and really drew me in to the book.