alaiyo0685's reviews
613 reviews

I really enjoyed this anthology as an in-depth look at sex-positive feminisms. It dealt with sex and sexuality both in and outside of relationships, sex work, sexual desire, kinkiness/fetishism, the sexual body, etc. As with any anthology, I related to and liked some essays more than others, but I think I took something away from all of them.

As a Black woman, I'm pretty easily reeled in by books whose titles suggest the author is trying to be either descriptive or, better/worse, prescriptive about Blackness. Baratunde Thurston's How to Be Black is clearly an example of this...and it definitely falls on the "better" side of that line for me. A collection of essays written mostly by Thurston himself, with interjections from others whose life work revolves around issues of race and identity in North America, How to be Black mixed punniness and provocativeness poignantly.

I feel blasphemous rating something by Angela Davis as just "okay," because she's an idol of mine, but here goes. I feel like this book was a game-changer when it came out. In 1983, I'm sure I would have given this book 5 stars.

But I wasn't alive yet in 1983. In fact, my mother was only 14. So by the time I did get around to reading this book nearly 30 years later, I felt like everything she was telling me, I'd heard before. What was revolutionary in the 80s, I took for granted in 2012. And on the one hand, that's great for where we've come as feminists and scholars...but it wasn't so great for getting through this book. It felt...basic, like a black feminist primer or something.

There are some great quotes in here, but all in all, the book wasn't life-changing in any way.