Revolutionary Reads
At the core of YWCA’s mission, our most essential job is to imagine, fight for, and create a more socially just world for the next generation of women — and also prepare them for that future. Since 2018, we’ve hosted a new kind of book club.
Each month, we feature reads that tie directly to YWCA Dayton’s current advocacy priorities – economic advancement, gender-based violence, affordable housing, and girls of color– to raise awareness and spark dialogue.
2023 Summer Book Club
This summer we’ll be reading four books and having four meet ups. RSVP online for any or all of the meet ups.
- June: Hood Feminism, Mikki Kendall
- July: Cooking for the Culture: Recipes and Stories from the New Orleans Streets to the Table, Toya Boudy
- August: Franchise, Marcia Chatelain
- September: The Light We Carry, Michelle Obama
Next Up: Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall
Discussion: June 29 at Wholly Grounds, 825 Wayne Ave, Dayton, OH 45410. Time TBD.
Book: Bookshop; Amazon; Thrift Books; Dayton Metro Library
REGISTER
Today’s feminist movement has a glaring blind spot, and paradoxically, it is women.
Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki Kendall, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues.
All too often, however, the focus is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few. That feminists refuse to prioritize these issues has only exacerbated the age-old problem of both internecine discord and women who rebuff at carrying the title.
Moreover, prominent white feminists broadly suffer from their own myopia with regard to how things like race, class, sexual orientation, and ability intersect with gender. How can we stand in solidarity as a movement, Kendall asks, when there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others?
In her searing collection of essays, Mikki Kendall takes aim at the legitimacy of the modern feminist movement, arguing that it has chronically failed to address the needs of all but a few women.
Drawing on her own experiences with hunger, violence, and hypersexualization, along with incisive commentary on reproductive rights, politics, pop culture, the stigma of mental health, and more, Hood Feminism delivers an irrefutable indictment of a movement in flux.
An unforgettable debut, Kendall has written a ferocious clarion call to all would-be feminists to live out the true mandate of the movement in thought and in deed.