Review of "Words of Fire - An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought" by B. Guy-Shefthall

Swarthmore College
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Religion Faculty Works
Fall 1996
Review Of "Words Of Fire: An Anthology

Of African-American Feminist Thought"
By B. Guy-Shefthall
Yvonne Patricia Chireau
Swarthmore College, [email protected]
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Yvonne Patricia Chireau. (1996). "Review Of "Words Of Fire: An Anthology Of African-American Feminist
Thought" By B. Guy-Shefthall". Georgia Historical Quarterly. Volume 80, Issue 3. 685-686.
http://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-religion/145
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Georgia Historical Society
Review
Author(s): Yvonne Chireau
Review by: Yvonne Chireau
Source: The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. 80, No. 3, HIGHER EDUCATION IN GEORGIA (
FALL 1996), pp. 685-686
Published by: Georgia Historical Society
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BOOK REVIEWS 685
on any issues, and most emphatically not on the explosive issue of woman
suffrage.
PAMELA TYLER
Narth Carolina State University
Words ofFire: An Anthology ofAfrican-American Feminist Thought. Edited

by Beverly Guy-Sheftall. (New York: The Free Press, 1995. Pp. xxvi, 577.
Notes, selected bibliography, index. $20.00 paper.)
Compiled and edited by Beverly Guy-Sheftall, a professor of

Women's Studies at Spelman College, this is a valuable collection of writ-
ings by and about Mrican-American women that spans the third decade
of the nineteenth century to the present day. Interdisciplinary in its fo-
cus, the volume features the voices of activists, artists, novelists, woman-
ists, Mrocentrists, scientists, socialists, politicians, preachers and others
whose contributions comprise a genealogy of black American women's
thought. Drawing upon such diverse and relevant topics as politics, na-
tionalism, sexuality, academia, art and cultural production, the essays
emphasize pragmatism and activism as essential components in the de-
velopment of theory, as evidenced by each writer's deliberate engage-
ment with the questions of identity and marginalization that uniquely
effect Mrican-American women. It is the balance that these authors
strike between their particular historical and social circumstances and
their articulation of a politics of resistance that provides the collection
with its cohesiveness and power. Together they expound a consistent
ideological focus on race and gender subjectivity that Guy-Sheftall,
among others, has chosen to characterize as "black feminist thought."
Readers familiar with the extensive literary and historical tradition of
black American women's writing will find little that is new here. Instead,
Guy-Shefthall has drawn together definitive texts, some hard-to-find
pieces and numerous reprints of classic writings into a concise, chronolog-
ical format, with useful biographical and topical introductions in each sec-
tion. Of special note are a previously unpublished article by Lorraine
Hansberry, a rare essay by a collective of black female radicals in the con-
temporary women's liberation movement, and a brief, provocative epi-
logue written by Johnetta Cole. Indeed, the value of this volume is in its
illustration of diversity and continuity within Mrican-American feminism,
rather than its advancement of any new theoretical innovations or conclu-
sions. While acknowledging the "deliberate" incompleteness of a book
that would constitute a canon of black feminist writings, Guy-Sheftall has
culled an impressive array of selections while underscoring the common
valances of Mrican-American female consciousness in its many modes and
inclinations. Her chosen task-of distinguishing black feminist writers
and their writings-will be controversial to some, since "feminism" is a
686 GEORGIA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
contested category, especially when applied to Mrican-American women

who do not self-identity as such. Guy-Sheftall delineates the fundamental
premises and assumptions that she finds underlying black feminist
thought, regardless of source or context. Foremost, she notes, is the pri-
macy of "triple jeopardy" in Mrican-American women's lives, or the con-
vergence of racial, sexual and class-based oppressions which differentiate
black women's understanding of race and gender politics from that of
white women and black men. It is from this critical standpoint that black
women simultaneously struggle for "racial liberation and gender equality,"
challenging the feminism of white women and the nationalism of black
men, a tension that has shaped Mrican-American feminist consciousness
from the earliest. Guy-Sheftall also identifies the interconnectedness of
black women's struggles against race, class and sexual discrimination as
embodied in a "commitment to liberation" which is "profoundly rooted"
in life experience. She notes that with these criteria fulfilled, any black
woman committed to race and gender equality could be called feminist,
even if she doesn't claim the expression for herself (p. 550).
The combination of authors whose works were chosen for inclusion
in this collection is even more intriguing when one considers that many
were omitted. Included are Sojourner Truth, Julia A. J. Foote, Margaret
Walker Alexander, Darlene Clark Hine, and Shirley Chisholm, among
others; not included are writings by the likes of Fannie Barrier Williams,
Adelaide Casely-Hayford, Mary Helen Washington, Evelyn Brooks Hig-
ginbotham and Patricia Williams. One wonders why there aren't more
anthologies out there that situate the work of these and other important
black female thinkers. The wealth of knowledge they embody is vast and
should no longer be overlooked. A promising corrective, Words of Fire
represents a first step toward a long-overdue revision of American intel-
lectual history.
YvONNE CHIREAU
Swarthmore College
Civilization and Black Progress: Selected Writings ofAlexander Crummell on

the South. Edited by J. R. Oldfield. Southern Texts Society Series. (Char-
lottesville: University Press ofVirginia, 1995. Pp. x, 265. Illustrations, ap-
pendix, notes, index. $38.50.)
Born to free black parents in New York City, Alexander Crummell
(1819-1898) grew up amid the relative privilege of the tiny antebellum
black middle class. Mter obtaining considerable education and admission
to the ministry in the Protestant Episcopal Church, Crummell left the
United States in 1849 to study at Queen's College, Cambridge. From 1853
to 1872, Crummell served as a missionary, proponent of colonization, and
educator in Liberia. Disillusioned with the political upheavals in Liberia
in the early 1870s, Crummell returned to the United States in 1872. In
1873 he became pastor of a prominent black Episcopal congregation in

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Swarthmore College

Review Of "Words Of Fire: An Anthology

Let us know how access to this work benefits you.

Words ofFire: An Anthology ofAfrican-American Feminist Thought. Edited

Compiled and edited by Beverly Guy-Sheftall, a professor of

contested category, especially when applied to Mrican-American women

Civilization and Black Progress: Selected Writings ofAlexander Crummell on

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