Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets

Black History Month

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A treatise on Black women’s transformative influence in media and society, placing them front and center in a new chapter of mainstream resistance and political engagement.

In Reclaiming Our Space, social worker, activist, and cultural commentator Feminista Jones explores how Black women are changing culture, society, and the landscape of feminism by building digital communities and using social media as powerful platforms. As Jones reveals, some of the best-loved devices of our shared social media language are a result of Black women’s innovations, from well-known movement-building hashtags (#BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, and #BlackGirlMagic) to the now ubiquitous use of threaded tweets as a marketing and storytelling tool. For some, these online dialogues provide an introduction to the work of Black feminist icons like Angela Davis, Barbara Smith, bell hooks, and the women of the Combahee River Collective. For others, this discourse provides a platform for continuing their feminist activism and scholarship in a new, interactive way.

Complex conversations around race, class, and gender that have been happening behind the closed doors of academia for decades are now becoming part of the wider cultural vernacular — one pithy tweet at a time. With these important online conversations, not only are Black women influencing popular culture and creating sociopolitical movements, they are also galvanizing a new generation to learn and engage in Black feminist thought and theory, and inspiring change in communities around them.

Hard-hitting, intelligent, incisive, yet bursting with humor and pop-culture savvy, Reclaiming Our Space is a survey of Black feminism’s past, present, and future, and it explains why intersectional movement building will save us all

“Smart, savvy, and unapologetically fierce.” Kirkus Reviews

“There’s a beautiful optimism about the power of social media throughout various chapters....Recommended for university-level courses on gender studies and new media studies as well as for general readers interested in the intersection of pop culture, feminist theory, racial justice, and activism.” Library Journal (Starred Review)

"If you want to understand the rising preeminence of black women in our modern day sociopolitical landscape, you would be smart to start with Feminista Jones, a black woman writing and working at the forefront of our movements.” Ijeoma Oluo, author of the New York Times bestseller So You Want To Talk About Race

“For those of us whose race and gender exist at a precarious intersection, Reclaiming Our Space is a godsend that will inform not only how we are approached and regarded by others through social media platforms but how we interact with each other and value ourselves.” CaShawn Thompson, creator of #BlackGirlMagic

Feminista Jones is a Philadelphia-based social worker, feminist writer, public speaker, and community activist. She is an award-winning blogger and the author of the novel Push the Button and the poetry collection The Secret of Sugar Water. She was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in Philadelphia and one of the Top 100 Black Social Influencers by The Root. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Time, Essence, and Ebony magazines.

Twenty years after I first began writing publicly about Black Americans’ experiences with oppression, I didn’t think I’d still be at it. I didn’t think I’d still be writing about our collective struggle, the restoration of our full humanity, and respect for our autonomous citizenship. At least not with the same ferocity or the same lamenting heart. Yet here I am...

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