This book is an introduction to the wealth of perspective of Black Feminists. Using whole essays by Black women in the US, this anthology highlights some of the best in Black Political Theory. One of the things that becomes extremely apparent is that Black Feminists are experts in the issue of differences between people. In one of the essays, Audre Lorde says that the future of the planet depends on women redefining difference. In this vein Audre Lorde has been one of the most influential people on the issue of intersectionality and positionality, meaning that people are diverse in a multitude of ways and that they occupy many different spaces in the human universe. Get this book, it will change the way you see everything.

This book is written by two feminist, African-American scholars. Either one or both have connections to Spelman, the nation's only college specifically for black women. In this book, the authors want to show how antiracist struggle could not have been successful without the black women visionaries who played a part in the movement, even if they wouldn't have called their ideas feminist. The chapters cover the authors' biographies, other black scholars talking about how they learned to embrace feminism and gay rights, the either/or bind between civil rights and women's rights, the black church, black silence on intraracial sexual assaults, black gays and lesbians, and rap music.
This is a positive text; the authors discuss where they would like to see black activists go, rather than just rehashing old schisms. Further, it recounts history to show that there have always been black feminists and black gay rights activists, thus negating fallacies which say these two groups are white-created by-products. Too often, even in progressive black literature, "race, class, and gender" are deemed of primary importance, but sexual orientation must take a backseat, even if authors are not homophobic. Here, almost every chapter says something about gays and combatting homophobia. I was loving it.
This book would make a great contribution for professors trying to put together courses about black feminism or about gay issues in African-American communities. The bibliography of each chapter could basically be a syllabus for many cool courses. Unfortunately, in many ways, the book is just a review of the literature rather than a new analysis of these matters. The chapters remind me both of papers I wrote and papers I read while an undergraduate student.
Still, this was an important black feminist book. Sadly, many readers may find Patricia Hill Collins too high-level and bell hooks too repetitive and paranoid, so this book would be a great look into black women's issues for more everyday readers. Regardless, this text was a great addition to studies of intersectionality and womanism (though the latter term is never brought up here).

Unfortunately my review may never be seen because I am not reviewing the text, rather I am reviewing the review. Once again a male person is determining what women should write about, how they should write it, and making general assessments about how women should receive a text written for women. I am saddened that this text did not meet the expectations of this male person, but I do not think that is why Cole and Guy-Sheftall wrote it--they wrote it for us sistahs. And berating Collins and hooks doesn't help either. I am ordering the text because it is important for me to read the words of black women written for (mainly) black women. Categorizing the text in terms of feminist or womanist demeans those women who are the everyday readers.