cover image Inessential Woman

Inessential Woman

Howard Bryant, Elizabeth V. Spelman. Beacon Press, $20 (240pp) ISBN 978-0-8070-6745-1

Much of mainstream feminism focuses on white, middle-class women. Spelman, in what PW termed ``a brilliant, scholarly rethinking of feminist thought,'' traces the roots of this tendency to ignore the interplay of racial, class, cultural and ethnic differences among oppressed women. (Mar.)