We Were There: The Third World Women’s Alliance and the Second Wave

Psychologist and activist Romney (coeditor, Understanding Power) delivers a comprehensive insider history of the Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA), a feminist organization that was active from 1970 to 1980. Romney details the group’s emergence from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and its development into an intersectional, multicultural, and sisterhood-centered organization for working-class Black, Latina, Asian, and Middle Eastern women who comprised America’s “third world.” She also describes the consciousness-raising, self-educational process by which members learned about Marxist socialism, international liberation movements, and their own bodies, and highlights the TWWA journal Triple Jeopardy, which published hundreds of articles at a time when nonwhite women’s writing had few outlets. Profiles of former members reveal how their early experiences with TWWA led to a lifetime of activism as writers, educators, policy advocates, and mothers fighting for better lives for their children. Throughout, an appealing sense of nostalgia enriches Romney’s argument that these “womanists, internationalists, anti-racist activists, and leftists” made significant contributions to second-wave feminism. This richly documented account rescues a critical chapter in the history of the feminist movement from obscurity. (Oct.)