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Joy James' inspirational, revolutionary book serves as more than a simple anti-dote to the two most recent, profound disappointments within US radical feminism: the cessation in publication of Sojourner, the oldest feminist monthly, and the closing of one of the country's most respected feminist bookstores, New Words.
What does this dismal scenario have to do with Shadowboxing?
Everything. In a decimated public sphere where most women no longer identify as feminist and the excitement and sense of possibility that once animated radical feminist struggles is rapidly dissipating, this book is badly needed. James, a brilliant, astute scholar, at once political theorist, social historian, and feminist activist, whose work on the prison industrial complex ignited so many other activist projects, has written her most compelling and important book to date. James' shadowboxing metaphor is used adroitly, demonstrating how revolutionary black feminists are the pugilists over-shadowed not only by official histories but also black liberal feminists.
Assata Shakur, Angela Davis, Ida B. Wells, and Ella Baker are names that should be well known to historians, and yet they are so often canonized, thereby blocking access to the complexity...