Djamila Ribeiro

The instant bestseller from Djamila Ribeiro that sparked a major Black feminist movement in Brazil “Part theory, part manifesto, part history. . . . [Where We Stand] has the makings of a truly modern feminist classic.”—Literary Hub, “Most Anticipated Books of 2024” In a society shaped by the legacies of enslavement, white supremacy, and sexism, who has the right to a voice? In this elegant essay, Djamila Ribeiro offers a compelling intervention into contemporary discussions of power and identity: the concept of “speaking place.” A crucial component of conversations on race and gender in Brazil, speaking place is the idea that everyone has a social position in the world and that what we are able to say, and how it is received by others, depends on it. Ribeiro traces the history of Black feminist thought through several centuries, examining the ways that Black women have been silenced, ignored, and punished for speaking. Building on feminist standpoint theory, and in conversation with the works of Sojourner Truth, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and others, Ribeiro invites all of us to recognize where we stand, to imagine geographies different from those we’ve inherited, and to speak a more humane world into being.

In the years since #MeToo, misogyny, sexism and gender based violence have flooded the news and our social media timelines. Anti-privilege politics and intersectionality have entered the mainstream—systematically trolled on one end of the spectrum; embraced, to questionable ends, on the other. But what has this increased visibility entailed, other than the marketisation of the feminist struggle? Feminism for the World argues that we have been witnessing an erasure of feminism as a long-term tradition, with its many conflicting histories and geographies of struggle elided and forgotten. In this ground-breaking collection, eight leading international figures of contemporary feminism highlight feminist struggles and traditions from the Global South, presenting feminism as a project that is impossible without international solidarity from the West. In doing so they revive an authentic internationalism and propose paths for present and future generations.

The instant bestseller from Djamila Ribeiro that sparked a major Black feminist movement in Brazil “Part theory, part manifesto, part history. . . . [Where We Stand] has the makings of a truly modern feminist classic.”—Literary Hub, “Most Anticipated Books of 2024” In a society shaped by the legacies of enslavement, white supremacy, and sexism, who has the right to a voice? In this elegant essay, Djamila Ribeiro offers a compelling intervention into contemporary discussions of power and identity: the concept of “speaking place.” A crucial component of conversations on race and gender in Brazil, speaking place is the idea that everyone has a social position in the world and that what we are able to say, and how it is received by others, depends on it. Ribeiro traces the history of Black feminist thought through several centuries, examining the ways that Black women have been silenced, ignored, and punished for speaking. Building on feminist standpoint theory, and in conversation with the works of Sojourner Truth, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and others, Ribeiro invites all of us to recognize where we stand, to imagine geographies different from those we’ve inherited, and to speak a more humane world into being.