In recent years, feminism has been at the forefront of social criticism in the United States, but the mainstream face of feminism is still typically white and often focused on gender issues to the exclusion of race, class, and almost everything else. Meanwhile, there are long and rich traditions of women-of-color-centered feminisms that acknowledge all systems of power as connected, and recognize how ending one form of violence entails the transformation of society on multiple fronts.

From 2007 to 2017, a small, Los Angeles-based independent magazine called make/shift published some of the most inspiring feminist voices of the decade, articulating ideas from the grassroots and amplifying feminist voices on immigration, state violence, climate change, and other issues.

Feminisms in Motion offers highlights from 10 years of make/shift magazine, providing a wide-ranging look at contemporary intersectional feminist thought and action.

We are living in a moment of mounting racist violence, xenophobia, income inequality, climate displacement, and war. Intersectional feminism has been creating and pointing toward solutions to these problems for generations. Feminisms in Motion offers ideas, critique, and inspiration from diverse feminists from Los Angles, to India, to Palestine, who are pointing toward a world where all people can thrive.

Foreword by TK

Introduction by Jessica Hoffmann and Daria Yudacufski

“Without You Who Understand: Letters from Radical Womyn of Color” by Lisa Factora-Borchers, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and Lailan Huen

“‘Love’ Is on Everyone’s Lips: A Roundtable of Women of Color Organizing in Detroit” facilitated by Adela Nieves, featuring Oya Amakisi, Grace Lee Boggs, adrienne maree brown, and Jenny Lee

“River” by Jessica Trimbath

“Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements” by Courtney Desiree Morris

“Pieces of Us: The Telling of Our Transformation” by the Azolla Story (Stacey Milbern, Mia Mingus, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha)

“The Power We Have: Things that Worked in Transformative Justice this Past Year” by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

“Everyday Actions” by Sharon Hoshida

“What’s Pink Got to Do with It?” by Christine E. Petit

“How That Poetry Is Also About Us” by Heather Bowlan

“This Might Be the First Time” by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

“Bring the Troops Home? On Family Violence, Economic Fear, and War” by Jessi Lee Jackson

“Queers Demand an End to Militarism” by Roan Boucher

“Bathing Beneath the Lebanese Sky” by Stephanie Abraham 

“Immigration at the Front: Challenging the ‘Every Woman’ Myth in Online Media” by brownfemipower

“On Prisons, Borders, Safety, and Privilege: An Open Letter to White Feminists” by Jessica Hoffmann

“Arrestable” by Ching-In Chen

“Learning to Say ‘Fuck You’: An Interview with Ida McCray” by Iris Brilliant

“Not Alternative: An Interview with Trifa Shakely” by Adela Nieves

“Sparking Difficult Dialogues”: Sam Feder and Dean Spade on Trans Documentaries

“Three Essays on Art, Academia, and Economics” by Jessica Lawless

“Debt” by Javon Johnson                                                                                                                  

“Dear Nomy” by Nomy Lamm

“Trashing Neoliberalism” by Yasmin Nair

“Community Reparations Now: Roan Boucher and Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia Talk Revolutionary Giving, Class, Privilege, and More”

“On Not Being Virginia Woolf” by Jennifer New

“Mamahood” by Randa Jarrar

“In the Kitchens of the Metropolis: An Interview with Silvia Federici” by Raia Small

“Toward New Visions of Sex and Culture Entirely” by Conner Habib

“Looking for Reproductive Justice: An Interview with Loretta Ross” by Celina R. de León

“Misdiagnosis: Reproductive Health and Our Environment” by Mariana Ruiz Firmat

“Decolonize Your Diet: An Interview with Luz Calvo” by Adela Nieves

“Some Monologues on Happiness: Performed by my friends, extemporaneously, as I performed oral sex on them” by T Clutch Fleischmann

“Where We are Not Known: Queer Imagination and the Photography of Kirstyn Russell” by Adrienne Skye Roberts

“The Attack on Attachment: Why Love Is the Loser in the So-Called Mommy Wars” by Andrea Richards

“M/Other Ourselves: A Black Feminist Genealogy or The Queer Thing” by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

“Bringing Down” by Jen Benka

“A Race for the Ages/The Blink of an Eye” by Erin Aubry Kaplan

“Social Change through Failure: An Interview with Chris Vargas and Eric Stanley” by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

“Vulnerable and Strong: Manshi Asher on Women Resisting the Growth Paradigm in India” by Roan Boucher

“To All Who Came Before, We Say: Pa’lante!: A Conversation between Nuyorican Activist Emma Torres and Her Niece Anna Elena Torres”

Contributor Biographies

Index