Mikki Kendall

Mikki Kendall (born October 23, 1976) is an author, activist, and cultural critic. Her work often focuses on current events, media representation, the politics of food, and the history of the feminist movement.

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot (2020)

 * My grandmother remains—despite her futile efforts to make me more ladylike—one of the most feminist women I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, and yet she would never have carried that label. Because so much of what feminists had to say of her time was laden with racist and classist assumptions about women like her, she focused on what she could control and was openly disdainful of a lot of feminist rhetoric. But she lived her feminism, and her priorities were in line with womanist views on individual and community health.
 * Introduction, p. x


 * Learning to defend myself, to be willing to take the risk of being a bad girl, was a process with a steep learning curve. But like with so many other things, I learned how to stand up even when other people were certain I should be content to sit down. Being good at being bad has been scary, fun, rewarding, and ultimately probably the only path that I was ever meant to walk.
 * Introduction, p. xii


 * No woman has to be respectable to be valuable.


 * One of the biggest issues with mainstream feminist writing has been the way the idea of what constitutes a feminist issue is framed. We rarely talk about basic needs as a feminist issue. Food insecurity and access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. Instead of a framework that focuses on helping women get basic needs met, all too often the focus is not on survival but on increasing privilege. For a movement that is meant to represent all women, it often centers on those who already have most of their needs met.


 * There’s nothing feminist about having so many resources at your fingertips and choosing to be ignorant. Nothing empowering or enlightening in deciding that intent trumps impact. Especially when the consequences aren’t going to be experienced by you, but will instead be experienced by someone from a marginalized community.


 * Sometimes being a good ally is about opening the door for someone instead of insisting that your voice is the only one that matters.


 * Too often white women decide that when they feel uncomfortable, upset, or threatened, they can turn to the patriarchy for protection. Because they don't want to lose that protection (dubious as it is), they stand by when it's convenient, and challenge it only when it directly threatens them. Yet, they know they benefit from it being challenged, and thus rely on others to do the heaviest lifting. They fail to recognize the conflicted relationship they have with the patriarchy includes a certain cowardice around challenging not only it, but other women who have embraced it.


 * Poverty is an apocalypse in slow motion, inexorable and generational.


 * An intersectional approach to feminism requires understanding that too often mainstream feminism ignores that Black women and other women of color are the proverbial canaries in the coal mine of hate.


 * America loves the myth of a meritocracy more than anything else, because it lets us ignore the reality of the impact of bigotry.


 * For women of color, the expectation that we prioritize gender over race, that we treat the patriarchy as something that gives all men the same power, leaves many of us feeling isolated.


 * Politeness as filtered through fragility and supremacy isn't about manners; it's about a methodology of controlling the conversation.


 * The problem has never been the ways that victims don’t tell, so much as it has been that some victims aren’t seen as valuable enough to protect.


 * We have to be willing to embrace the full autonomy of people who are less privileged and understand that equity means making access to opportunity easier, not deciding what opportunities they deserve.


 * There is no shame in asking for help; it takes strength to admit you need it.