Charisse Burden-Stelly and Jodi Dean, "Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women's Political Writing" (Verso, 2022)
Black Communist women throughout the early to mid-twentieth century fought for and led mass campaigns in the service of building collective power in the fight for liberation. Through concrete materialist analysis of the conditions of Black workers, these women argued that racial and economic equality can only be achieved by overthrowing capitalism.\nThe first collection of its kind,\xa0Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women's Political Writing\xa0(Verso, 2022)\xa0brings together three decades of Black Communist women\u2019s political writings. In doing so, it highlights the link between Communism and Black liberation. Likewise, it makes clear how Black women fundamentally shaped, and were shaped by, Communist praxis in the twentieth century.\nOrganize, Fight, Win\xa0includes writings from card-carrying Communists like Dorothy Burnham, Williana Burroughs, Grace P. Campbell, Alice Childress, Marvel Cooke, Esther Cooper Jackson, Thelma Dale Perkins, Vicki Garvin, Yvonne Gregory, Claudia Jones, Maude White Katz, and Louise Thompson Patterson, and writings by those who organized alongside the Communist Party, like Ella Baker, Charlotta Bass, Thyra Edwards, Lorraine Hansberry, and Dorothy Hunton.\nIn this interview, I spoke with the editors of this collection, Charisse Burden-Stelly and Jodi Dean.\xa0\nCharisse Burden-Stelly\xa0(@blackleftaf)\xa0is Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Wayne State University. She is the author, with Gerald Horne, of\xa0W. E. B. Du Bois: A Life in American History.\nJodi Dean\xa0(@Jodi7768)\xa0is a professor in the\xa0Political Science Department at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in\xa0Geneva, New York. She has written or edited thirteen books, including recent Verso title\xa0Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging.\n\nCatriona Gold\xa0(@cat__gold)\xa0is a PhD candidate in Geography at University College London, researching security and mobility in the 20-21st century United States. Her current work concerns the US Passport Office's role in governing\xa0Cold War travel.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies