Review: Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom , by Keisha N. Blain

Abstract

Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom By Keisha N. Blain University of Pennsylvania Press, 264 pp., $34-95 Keisha N. Blain offers a dynamic counterhistory of black women's involvement in black nationalist activism in the first half of the 20th century. After the decline of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, black women leaders like Amy Ashwood, Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, Amy Jacques Garvey, Ethel Waddell, and Maymie De Mena continued to pursue relocation in the hopes of establishing an autonomous black community free from the threat of white supremacy. In this way, her work serves as an intellectual counterpart to the grassroots efforts of women leaders in contemporary groups like Black Lives Matter.