Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets.

AuthorJones, Feminista
PositionBOOKS - Book review

Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets

By Feminista Jones

Beacon Press. 224 pages.

As a twenty-something whose short life has grown alongside that of the Internet and social media, I honestly didn't think that a book on the benefits of social media would tell me much that I didn't already know. But Feminista Jones's Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets is not just a lesson on the tools used by online communities. Its an origin story.

Jones is a social worker, activist, writer, and cultural commentator with a huge Twitter following. Reclaiming Our Space details the ways that black feminism has evolved by changing with the times. Jones makes it clear that Twitter did not give birth to black feminism, but that it catapulted decades of work into the mainstream.

"Freedom of speech takes on a new meaning when those most denied access to the fundamental rights are now proprietors of the most discourse of our time," she writes.

Highlighted throughout are social justice movements that have grown because of social media, including #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, and #WhyIStayed. But Jones reminds us that Tarana Burke started the Me Too movement ten year's before someone tweeted it as a hashtag.

Interwoven with...

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