On Intersectionality - by Kimberlé Crenshaw (Hardcover)

About the Book

In this comprehensive and accessible introduction to Crenshaw's work, readers will find key essays and articles that have defined the concept of intersectionality, collected together for the first time.

Book Synopsis

A major publishing event, the collected writings of the groundbreaking scholar who "first coined intersectionality as a political framework" (Salon)

For more than twenty years, scholars, activists, educators, and lawyers--inside and outside of the United States--have employed the concept of intersectionality both to describe problems of inequality and to fashion concrete solutions. In particular, as the Washington Post reported recently, "the term has been used by social activists as both a rallying cry for more expansive progressive movements and a chastisement for their limitations." Drawing on black feminist and critical legal theory, Kimberlé Crenshaw developed the concept of intersectionality, a term she coined to speak to the multiple social forces, social identities, and ideological instruments through which power and disadvantage are expressed and legitimized.

In this comprehensive and accessible introduction to Crenshaw's work, readers will find key essays and articles that have defined the concept of intersectionality, collected together for the first time. The book includes a sweeping new introduction by Crenshaw as well as prefaces that contextualize each of the chapters. For anyone interested in movement politics and advocacy, or in racial justice and gender equity, On Intersectionality will be compulsory reading from one of the most brilliant theorists of our time.

Review Quotes

Praise for Kimberlé Crenshaw's Critical Race Theory:
"As of the publication of Critical Race Theory it will be unwise, if not impossible, to do any serious work on race without referencing this splendid collection."
--Toni Morrison

Praise for Kimberlé Crenshaw:
"Kimberlé Crenshaw belongs at the center of public conversation. . . . Imagine the world we might have if we all took a few moments to engage her ideas."
--Melissa Harris-Perry, MSNBC

"Her name and her work [have] become an introductory point for feminists of all stripes."
--New Statesman

"Considering its recent prominence, it's surprising to realize that the term [intersectionality] has been around only since 1989: It was coined by legal scholar and critical theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw."
--The Washington Post

"The theorist who first coined intersectionality as a political framework."
--Salon

"It's now been over two decades since legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw wrote her original paper coining the term 'intersectionality' and mainstream feminism is still in the throes of a massive storm around it."
--The Guardian

About the Author

Kimberlé Crenshaw is distinguished professor of law at UCLA, a professor of law at Columbia Law School, and a co-founder and the executive director of the African American Policy Forum. She is a co-editor (with Neil T. Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas) of Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement. Crenshaw lives in New York City and Los Angeles.