Publishers Weekly
04/19/2021
Attorney and journalist Zakaria (Veil) makes a lucid and persuasive argument that feminism must address its “problematic genealogies” of whiteness. She notes that British suffragists refused to support Indian self rule, while those in the U.S. demanded that white women get the vote before Black men, and critiques early feminist theorists including Simone de Beauvoir for centering white womanhood as universal. Zakaria, a Pakistani Muslim woman, describes her own dismissive treatment at the hands of white feminists, but the book’s strongest sections detail how Western aid organizations and feminist groups including the National Organization for Women alienate and devalue women of color worldwide. Among other topics, she dissects the culturally myopic attitudes embedded in sex-positive “empowerment” messaging and the “ruthless individualism” of white women journalists who seek to “gain access to the intimate spaces of Black and Brown women.” Zakaria also links “moral outrage” in the West over Muslim “honor killings” to the “agenda of colonialism,” which “involved manufacturing definitions of new crimes and new classes of criminality to make a point about the moral degeneracy of the people whose freedom, goods, and land were being looted.” Tackling complex philosophical ideas with clarity and insight, Zakaria builds an impeccable case for the need to rebuild feminism from the ground up. Readers will want to heed this clarion call for change. (Aug.)
Nadifa Mohamed
"Full of painful truths about how one kind of feminism can dominate and silence women. A fantastic book."
Mythili G. Rao
"Passionate and provocative. . . the heart of what this book demands—a feminism that is less self-satisfied and secure in its power, more curious about the differences in women’s experiences, and more generous and expansive in its reach—is worth fighting for."
Literary Hub - Kerri Arsenault
"This necessary book is a critique of how whiteness (not white women) has infiltrated feminism and how it should be razor-bladed out of the current form.… Zakaria is a warmhearted and sharp-eyed writer who brings compassion, intelligence, and a steady drumbeat of change to redefining term—feminism—a word that is old and soggy and full of white ladies yelling about things. This book is going to light fires everywhere, so if you are prone to combust, get right the hell out of the way."
Kate Manne
"Zakaria’s Against White Feminism is a brilliant, bracing, and deeply necessary text. Showing how feminism had systematically centered white women’s voices, and excluded others’, this is a polemic that couldn’t be more urgent in improving feminism as a movement."
Arts ATL - Ruby Lal
"Glued to the pages, I read the book in one sitting. Want to think seriously about the exquisite power of ‘personal is political?’ Want to think carefully about privilege - and White privilege? This is your book... [Against White Feminism is] a call to address our complicity in structures of power."
Los Angeles Times - Ruth Etiesit Samuel
"Zakaria sharply critiques the Betty Friedan-descended ‘trickle-down feminism’ that has long dominated politics, tracing the ‘agenda of colonialism’ in empowerment narratives and challenging white women’s support for existing power structures."
Boston Globe - Dialynn Dwyer
"A reckoning and a wakeup call to the degree to which we really need to tear down and reexamine our systems of activism that we’re already trying to use to change the world."
Sonia Faleiro
"Rafia Zakaria’s Against White Feminism is the book I have been waiting for. This landmark work will forever change how we view the feminist movement and our place in it."
Catherine Mayer
"Uncomfortable, often coruscating, always challenging in the best ways and never less than riveting, this book is essential reading, and especially for anyone white who identifies as a feminist. Rafia Zakaria neatly dismantles the stand-on-the-shoulders-of-giants school of white feminism that in failing to understand the intertwined history of the women’s movement and white supremacy continues to perpetuate the inequalities it purports to address. She doesn’t just deliver punchy, corrective narratives, but achieves something at least as important in questioning where we get our ideas and encouraging critical thinking."
NPR - Jenny Bhatt
"This steely, incisive critique deserves your attention."
Harper's Bazaar - Brian Ng
"[Against White Feminism] is more than just a reframing of feminism; it is Zakaria holding truth to power."
Financial Times - Mehreen Khan
"A blistering revolutionary tract that seeks to expunge whiteness from the feminist movement…[Against White Feminism] will polarise opinion but is impossible to ignore."
Los Angeles Review of Books - Marcie Bianco
"Zakaria’s Against White Feminism offers the most rigorous critique of equality, especially when it is conceived of as an American ideal ‘gifted to’ or imposed upon the rest of the world."
Merve Emre
"Zakaria's frank, spirited critique of feminism's historical complicity with empire and capital, its appalling insularity, and its deep-seated provincialism opens onto a shimmering vision of true solidarity. This is, quite simply, a transformative book."
Jenny Hamilton
"Zakaria lays out the damage white feminism has wrought in clear, unflinching terms and urges readers to commit to a feminism that is truly collective and global."
The New Yorker
"Combining personal anecdotes with historical analysis, these essays examine such linked phenomena as the ‘white savior industrial complex,’ ‘securo-feminism,’ and the commodification of sexual liberation. Zakaria calls for a feminism that is not only centered on the experiences of women of color but also, more broadly, seeks to counter 'whiteness'…Her argument spans centuries and continents."
Pankaj Mishra
"Intellectually resourceful and passionately argued, Rafia Zakaria's sharp and salutary essay expands and refines our ideas of freedom, justice and equity."
Salon - Kylie Cheung
"A bold call to action to eradicate white supremacy and neoliberalism from feminism in order for the movement to have a future, Zakaria analyzes the historical ties between white women-led suffrage and imperialism, and the dangers of global philanthropy that doesn't seek input from supposed beneficiaries."
Myriam Chingona Gurba De Serrano
"This ambitious, elegant and brilliantly argued polemic shows us how white supremacy harms Black and brown women, and offers a different politics in its place. I am grateful for this book."
Washington Post - Mythili G Rao
"Passionate and provocative. . . the heart of what this book demands—a feminism that is less self-satisfied and secure in its power, more curious about the differences in women’s experiences, and more generous and expansive in its reach—is worth fighting for."
Kate Mann
"Zakaria’s Against White Feminism is a brilliant, bracing, and deeply necessary text. Showing how feminism had systematically centered white women’s voices, and excluded others’, this is a polemic that couldn’t be more urgent in improving feminism as a movement."
Library Journal
07/01/2021
Zakaria's (The Upstairs Wife) new book is based on a simple premise: that Western (white) feminism does not serve the needs of all women and is not the ideal to which other feminisms should aspire. She makes the case that white feminism is based on guarding power and speaking on behalf of "powerless" women instead of valuing non-white voices. Zakaria effectively shows that white feminists often focus on bringing feminism and enlightenment to marginalized people instead of examining the ways in which these marginalized people already practice feminism within their own lives and experiences. In examining the pitfalls of white feminism, Zakaria also explores related issues, such as the cult of relatability, the dichotomy between expertise and experience, virtue signaling, and sexual liberation as a core pillar of white feminism. She provides perspective on U.S. events such as the Women's March in 2017 and the failure to acknowledge the role of white supremacy in the 2016 presidential election. VERDICT While Zakaria's argument is not the only one of its kind, her examination of current examples from politics and pop culture furnishes crucial evidence of the continued colonization of feminism by white women. She brings this conversation into mainstream view.—Siobhan Egan, Barrington P.L., RI
Kirkus Reviews
2021-06-16
An exploration of the divisive effects of Whiteness on feminism and a strong argument for transforming long-standing power structures.
In her latest book, Zakaria examines “dimensions of the feminist movement as it exists today, how it has arrived at this point, and where it could go from here, such that every woman who calls herself a feminist, of any race, class, nationality, or religion, can see a path forward and a reason to stay.” Underscoring her case against hegemonic trickle-down feminism are the author’s personal experiences. At age 17, while she was still living in her native Pakistan, she agreed to an arranged marriage in order to move to the U.S., where her future husband, 13 years her senior, promised to “allow” her to go to college. “I had never experienced freedom, so I gladly signed it away,” she writes. Their relationship became abusive, and, years later, Zakaria fled to a women’s shelter with their young daughter. The author describes in studied detail the dissonance between “the women who write and speak feminism and the women who live it,” pointing out that the former are almost exclusively White and middle- or upper-middle-class, while the latter are typically Black and brown working-class women. Zakaria asserts that White feminists “are constructing a feminism that uses the lives of Black and Brown people as arenas in which they can prove their credentials to white men….Freedom is a zero-sum game, more for one group (white women) only possible as the reinforcement of less for another (non-white people).” Demanding anti-capitalist empowerment, political solidarity, and intersectional redistributive change, the author eviscerates White-centered feminism, the tokenization of women of color, the aid industrial complex, and more. The final chapter, “From Deconstruction to Reconstruction,” is a welcome transition from visceral attack to plea for unification. In her conclusion, Zakaria acknowledges that “critique is the first step in a long process of opening debate.”
A worthy contribution to feminist and activist studies.
