The first thing to say about this book is that the title is perhaps misleading. When I first saw it on the bookshelves in Waterstones, I assumed it was going to be a series of essays as to why we should all be feminists, but a quick look at the blurb told me otherwise. This book is a collection of essays from women and gender non-conforming people from marginalised communities who, in one way or another, have found that mainstream feminism (ie white feminism) has failed them. The book covers a huge range of topics, from the Black Lives Matter movement, to abortion rights in Northern Island, to immigration and refugee rights, to feminism in the diaspora. It was such an eye-opener into not just the way that mainstream feminism has left so many people behind, but the number of issues that are feminist issues and aren’t considered as such.

With seventeen essays I won’t delve into each one, but I’ll mention a few that stood out to me. Many of them were about how the civil rights movement and the feminist movement have failed to intersect, both in the UK and the USA, discussing everything from the way women are repeatedly left out of the Black Lives Matter movement to the way that suffrage movements often pitted white women and men of colour against each other, leaving out women of colour altogether.

‘A Hundred Small Rebellions’ by Eishar Kaur describes feminist politics in British-Punjabi communities, although the word ‘feminist’ is not used to describe them. She describes the way that neither white feminism nor Indian feminism is at all useful or helpful even though she and her family live in both of these worlds. In ‘Ends, Means and Subterfuge in Feminist Action’, Emer O’Toole describes the way that in order to decriminalise abortion in Northern Ireland, in what was an undeniably feminist campaign and cause, the only way to achieve success was to not say the F word and instead talk about the husbands and families whose lives had been affected because a woman was unable to get the healthcare she needed. Notably, the essay was written before the actual referendum, so at the time of writing O’Toole had no idea whether or not the campaign would be a success.

The essay that hit me hardest was Wei Ming Kam’s The Machinery of Disbelief, which delves into why British immigration laws (and immigration laws of most Western countries) are fundamentally patriarchal, and how there is little to no support for women caught up in a system of a country where they have no legal standing. I couldn’t quite believe that something that is clearly such a huge issue, and should be at the very least a core part of the shelter movement, had not only never crossed my mind but also never been brought up by politicians, campaigners, books, articles, news stories, even friends. It’s an enormous issue under our very noses and nothing is being done.

Every single person should read this book. It opens up your eyes to the plethora of human experiences, and a whole host of lives and stories that you probably didn’t know anything about. I defy anyone to read this book and not learn something. At it’s most basic level, it’s the difference between feminism and girl power. At it’s most complex, it’s the mechanics of societies all around the world that consistently leave behind the most vulnerable.