A Press of Our Own Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press

Abstract

If any one had asked in 1980 whether books by women of color could sell or whether a press that published only work by and about women of color could survive, the logical answer would have been no, especially if the person who answered the question was part of the commercial publishing establishment. Even less than a decade ago, writing by American Indian, African American, Latina, and Asian American women was barely noticed by literary and academic establishments, let alone by the general reading public. Since the early 1970s, however, a small but devoted group of feminist activists, teachers, and writers, many of them Black women, have been working to make visible the writing, culture, and history of women of color. It was their work, not Madison Avenue's, that laid the political and ideological groundwork for Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press and also for the current eighties renaissance of writing by Black and other women of color.