Abstract
Women’s Journey to Empowerment in the 21 st Century: A Transnational Feminist Analysis of Women’s Lives in Modern Times is an inspirational collection of contributions examining a wide variety of specific issues affecting the lives of women across different cultures and countries. It explores the ways their experiences of social inequality might be exquisitely unique yet might be selectively shared by other women living in different contexts globally, over a span of many years to the present time. The moving spirit of transnational feminism flows throughout these writings to celebrate the relevant and influential contributions of Chandra Mohanty, and the pieces offer critical examinations of these different dimensions of women’s lives from a wide diversity of academic and professional spaces. The book embraces this engaging intellectual praxis in each one of its 23 chapters, which are organized in four sections.
The first section invites the reader to think about the institutional neglect of women and girls affecting women globally, through the experiences of (1) women in Ghana, climate change, and ecofeminism; (2) African American women, health, and reproductive disadvantages; (3) Han and Meng girls living on the margins of Chinese society as they explore their vocational and educational journeys; (4) women and the never-ending challenge of sexual assault in the context of U.S. higher education; (5) Indigenous women of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Reservation in the context of historical trauma and intergenerational trauma, living in what is now known as the United States of America; and (6) women of color as educators in the classrooms of academia deciphering the labyrinth of patriarchy, racism, and white privilege.
The book’s second section offers a window to the ways patriarchy and gender inequality have only reinvented themselves through social media by looking closely at women’s lives in the context of (7) nonconsensual image-sharing and sexual violence online; (8) honor killings in the Middle East and the role of social media in the case of Qandeel Baloch in Pakistan; (9) sexual violence against girls and women in a wide variety of public and private spaces in Japan; and (10) feminist activism and social organizing in Egypt, with special reflections about the revolution and women’s lives.
The third section exposes the cruel and painful realities of gender equity and politics by looking closely at (11) women leaving their countries of origin, giving birth, and raising children born of sexual violence, with a special interest in the Netherlands, a country hosting many displaced women migrating with these stories in their hearts; (12) young girls who get married in the United States, as part of a frequently overlooked phenomenon of child marriage in a highly industrialized country; (13) women, loneliness, and mental health in Australia, with a special concern about the complexities of those who experience homelessness; (14) women, abortion, reproductive rights, and political struggles in Poland; (15) women who are human rights defenders in the Philippines, violations of their human rights, and their endless political struggles; and (16) women with raped bodies and broken souls surviving and coping with the use of individual and collective sexual violence as part of war and conflict in Myanmar (Burma).
The powerful testimony of Iron, a courageous transgender person, opens the fourth section to introduce a discussion on intimate partner violence through the experiences of (17) women and domestic violence in Kyrgyzstan; (18) young women’s dating experiences in China; (19) women in same-sex relationships and intimate partner violence in China; (20) women’s involvement in cults; (21) women in Trinidad and Tobago; (22) women’s participation in peace-building processes and gender inclusivity in Nagorno-Karabakh; and (23) women within the U.S. military-prostitution complex worldwide.
Most of these 23 informative and accessible chapters open with a moving case study or a personal narrative to introduce the reader to an overall rich discussion. In general, each chapter includes an analysis of the historical trends of the issue or concern to be discussed, women’s status in a given culture or country, the current social conditions shaping their lives, insightful transnational reflections, and intellectually stimulating possibilities about the future with regard to advocacy, social justice, and change. The incorporation of images gives a special texture and human dimension to these chapters, and the valuable sections with discussion questions offered at the end of each chapter are intellectually stimulating—all of them have the potential to be used as pedagogical tools to engage in thought-provoking conversations in our feminist classrooms.
This rich collection of feminist writings is about pain and possibilities; challenges and struggles, past, present, and future; and about the powerful ways in which academic life and advocacy must always be deeply interconnected. This page-turner book would be that excellent present —a present that must be opened many times— for that friend or colleague in the social sciences who may ask in a genuine way, “But why are you a feminist?”
I read this book and wrote this review as a Mexican immigrant woman currently living and working in the United States and a member of an extended family with a long history of international migration, across generations. My transnational, borderless feminist solidarity is with each one of the editors and contributors, trained across different disciplines and professions, and the many human beings giving life to the moving personal narratives and painful statistics of countless expressions of gender inequality that may affect us selectively at national, regional, and local levels, but that keep calling desperately for global action.
Women’s Journey to Empowerment in the 21 st Century is a call for action and a celebration of our feminist scholarship and its transformative power in the unfolding millennium. This invaluable volume reflects the light in the dark—the Anzalduan claro-obscuro—that caressed my mind as I closed the back hard cover of this impressive book, and the melody of Anzaldúa’s theorizing and wisdom that touched my heart at that moment: “We are the song that sings us. It begins with ‘Let us fight no more but heal the wounds of nations. Let us be the healing of the wound’” (Anzaldúa 2015).