‘Second-Wave’ Black Feminist Periodicals in Britain

Abstract

This article offers a long overdue exploration of black feminist periodicals in the UK during the period of second-wave feminism. In it, the author examines four feminist periodicals—FOWAAD, Speak Out, We Are Here and Mukti—in order to trace the development of black feminism in Britain and to investigate the extent to which black feminist periodicals in the UK became key sites for the development of a black feminist political critique that was aimed at three targets: the (white) feminist movement, the racist British state, and patriarchal structures within migrant communities. Insisting on the interconnected nature of gendered, race and class oppression in a manner that foreshadowed many contemporary theoretical developments around the politics of intersectionality, these periodicals provide vital insights into the black women’s movement and its complicated relationship to larger radical black movements and the concept of ‘political blackness’.