Women’s Studies: Cultivating Accountability as a Practice of Solidarity

Abstract

It’s been 25 years since I first read Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua’s This Bridge Called My Back (1981), bell hooks’ Ain’t I a Woman (1981), Angela Davis’ Women, Race, and Class (1981), and Gloria Joseph and Jill Lewis’ Common Differences (1981). These feminist writers rocked my world and transformed my feminist ideas, scholarship, and activism. They made me deeply question the underlying assumptions, limits, and dangers of different types of feminisms and feminists. They made me realize that feminist movement is not simply about fighting the outside enemy, but it is also struggling within myself and within feminist groups, communities, and institutions. They challenged me to be more reflective and introspective about my own identity, location, actions in relationship to and complicity in systems of oppression and privilege.