Black Women Told You with Feminista Jones

“When black women win, everyone wins.” This week, Feminista Jones tells us all about black feminism, social media, activism, and her new book, Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets.

Feminista is a writer, community activist, social worker, public speaker, and one of our extremely longtime faves. She wrote her latest book—out now—to capture the current moment of black feminism on social media and in digital communities, and serve as her personal contribution to feminist theory and history.

There is a unique existence being both black and woman in this world. And black feminism is the refusal to choose one or the other. It is the declaration that I am both, and I will not choose one or the other, and that all of my liberation work, and all of the things that I fight for are because I am both.

—Feminista Jones, activist and author

Y’all definitely need to listen up, because she’s full of wisdom. We talk about:

We talk about:

• Why she wrote Reclaiming Our Space—and why you should go request it from your local library


• Black feminism and digital platforms


• #YouOkSis and the importance of bystander intervention


• Her new passion project, Black in Philly, profiling real life for black people across the city


• How she deals with the harassment that comes along with having 160,000 Twitter followers

Links:

• Feminista’s website


• Twitter


• Instagram


• Black in Philly


• Reclaiming Our Space


• #YouOkSis

Plus:

• Sara and Katel chat about being white, seeing race, and understanding what “whiteness” is—and isn’t


• How Oregon started out as a whites-only state—and no one talked about it


• What to read: The Collected Schizophrenias, Esmé Weijun Wang’s new essay collection, out now from Graywolf Press, about living with chronic mental illness


• Fuck yeah to surprising your friends with a card in the mail to brighten their day