Where We Stand

The instant bestseller from Djamila Ribeiro that sparked a major Black feminist movement in Brazil In a society shaped by the legacies of enslavement, white supremacy, and sexism, who has the right to a voice? In this elegant essay, Djamila Ribeiro offers a compelling intervention into contemporary discussions of power and identity: the concept of "speaking place." A crucial component of conversations on race and gender in Brazil, speaking place is the idea that everyone has a social position in the world, and what we are able to say, and how it is received by others, depends on it. Ribeiro highlights the precarious position of the Black woman as the other of the otherlocated on the margins of conversations about race, which often focus on men, and on the fringes of feminism, which centers white women. Tracing the history of Black feminist thought through several centuries, she examines the ways that Black women have been silenced, ignored, and punished for speaking. Building on feminist standpoint theory, and in conversation with the works of Sojourner Truth, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and others, Ribeiro invites all of us to recognize where we stand, to imagine geographies different from those weve inherited, and to speak a more humane world into being.