There's a really interesting premise here: that academic studies in feminism are so removed from the diverse practical experiences of feminism - particularly the experiences of people who are poor, or marginalised further by race or sexuality - that they become alienating. I can't say that I ever studied feminism at uni, but I am an academic writer, albeit in areas related to science fiction and science communication, and my frustration with how deliberately exclusive, and deliberately elitist, my work has to be in order to get published gives me sympathy from the get-go.

There are a lot of different approaches taken in this book - short essays, personal reflections, dialogues, the occasional poem - and nearly all are by young Indigenous writers who are either (at time of writing) studying at university themselves, just finished studying, or have deliberately removed themselves from that environment. A common thread is how undervalued they feel within academia, and how their experiences are often dismissed as almost irrelevant because those experiences are judged as lacking sufficient theory to be valid. Personal experience in activism, and in feminism, they point out, is key. It's a common sense approach, and one that prioritises clear communication, so naturally it is largely ignored within academia (I say, with a certain tired amusement of my own). 

Lots of interesting, thoughtful stuff here. The piece that stood out most for me, though, was Megan Lee's "Maybe I'm not Class-Mobile; Maybe I'm Class-Queer: Poor Kids in College, and Survival Under Hierarchy" which is a painfully honest exploration of the mixed feelings that result from academic opportunities that drive wedges between students and the communities that they come from.