The Trouble with White Women

A Counterhistory of Feminism

By: Kyla Schuller, Brittney Cooper - foreword

Narrated by: Christine Lakin, Mela Lee

An incisive history of self-serving White feminists and the inspiring women who’ve continually defied them.

Women including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Sanger, and Sheryl Sandberg are commonly celebrated as leaders of feminism. Yet they have fought for the few, not the many. As award-winning scholar Kyla Schuller argues, their White feminist politics dispossess the most marginalized to liberate themselves.

In The Trouble with White Women, Schuller brings to life the 200-year counter-history of Black, Indigenous, Latina, poor, queer, and trans women pushing back against White feminists and uniting to dismantle systemic injustice. These feminist heroes such as Frances Harper, Harriet Jacobs, and Pauli Murray have created an anti-racist feminism for all. But we don’t speak their names, and we don’t know their legacies. Unaware of these intersectional leaders, feminists have been led down the same dead-end alleys generation after generation, often working within the structures of racism, capitalism, homophobia, and transphobia rather than against them.

Building a more just feminist politics for today requires a reawakening, a return to the movement’s genuine vanguards and visionaries. Their compelling stories, campaigns, and conflicts reveal the true potential of feminist liberation. The Trouble with White Women gives feminists today the tools to fight for the flourishing of all.

©2021 Kyla Schuller (P)2021 Bold Type Books

Extremely inspiring and wonderful

This book has taught me so much. It is brilliant, moral and carefully researched. I am going to read the book now. Thank you for your work.

So informative

Wow. I learned so much listening to this book. I have no idea HOW to join the intersectionality movement, but I sure want to do something.

damn

Every single bit of this was educational, informative, and necessary!

I picked this book on a whim because, as a white woman, I'm well aware of just how problematic white women can be. I knew in abstract that the feminist movement was problematic regarding racism due to random tidbits I've read. I knew that the person who founded Planned Parenthood, while arguably a great organization in this day and age, wanted to sterilize large groups of people that she didn't think should be allowed to reproduce.

I'm glad to have found this book.

Excellent read!

This book was so informative, and really highlights how sex, race, gender, and economic status intersect in various feminist movements. I loved how the author compared white feminists with feminists of color in each chapter, really giving the reader a more detailed view of each persons background and perspective. This should be required reading at the high school level!

Well-written, illuminating, I learned so much.

This book was fantastic - I’m writing my dissertation in feminist rhetoric and know a lot about the history of women’s movements, and yet, I learned so much from this book. Schuller is a great writer and storyteller. She explains well the concepts she’s discussing and problems inherent in white feminism, especially it’s interwoven relationship to oppression and capitalism. Highly recommend.

Essential reading

Both a history lesson and social commentary on how white women have propped themselves up using the knowledge and lived experiences of Black women while others have written them out of the narrative as they rise to the top.

Everything

"The Trouble with White Women" feels like the creation of either an attorney or a painter, I can't decide. It's literary art. It's the rare book I could not just browse or be satisfied with portions. I don't typically read snatches from books, but often in retrospect, I can recognize the most salient sections, sort of like highlighting.

This is a "cover-to-cover" affair. Every paragraph builds a chapter that leads to the next, and then finally, the epilogue.

Amazing

I learned a great deal from this book. It was very eye opening, and had an excellent reader.

A Must Read

If you consider yourself a feminist, you must read this. White women need to do better.

astounding

blew apart my conceptions of what feminism is and who "does" feminism. As a white person, I was humbled by my lack of knowledge regarding intersectional feminism, and this book has provided me an amazing introduction to educating myself about the real history of feminism, and about the deep flaws and cracks in mainstream white feminism.