You may know 25-year-old Blair Imani for her activism during the 2016 Alton Sterling protests in Baton Rouge, and perhaps also for the time she came out as a queer Muslim on Tucker Carlson Tonight. But as of late, she’s channeled years of activism and advocacy work into a new project: Modern Herstory, an illustrated feminist history book that documents the stories of modern women and nonbinary people whose relentless work has helped advance communities around the world. “Everyone who’s been pushed to the margins,” Imani told Jezebel on a recent visit to our studio. “We’re taking those people and pushing them to the center.”
A Conversation With Activist Blair Imani About Her Feminist History Book
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DISCUSSION
...aaaand purchased! I’ve been looking for a book on this topic for a while but come up... wanting. History is so, so important to our movements; without knowing where we’ve come from, and how we’ve failed in the past, how the hell can we ever get where we want to go?
For instance, the intersectional women’s rights movement as we know it today is hugely similar to the abolition and women’s rights movements in the 1850's. The 2016 election breakdowns are indicative of a similar schism that occurred in the 1890's women’s rights movement and holy hell, 1918.
As feminists we like to complain about our history being erased by white men, but we do plenty of erasing and ignoring of our own.