The most comprehensive collection of feminist manifestos, chronicling our rage and dreams from the nineteenth century to today.
In this landmark collection spanning three centuries and four waves of feminist activism and writing, Burn It Down! is a testament to what is possible when women are driven to the edge. The manifesto-raging and wanting, quarreling and provocative-has always been central to feminism, and it's the angry, brash feminism we need now.
Collecting over 75 manifestos from around the world, Burn It Down! is a rallying cry and a call to action. Among this quarrelsome sisterhood, you'll find:
Breanne Fahs argues that we need manifestos in all their urgent rawness-their insistence that we have to act now, that we must face this, that the bleeding edge of rage and defiance is where new ideas are born.
"This text is important historically and as a handbook for understanding and organizing today. Fahs has put together a collection that runs from the immediate and practical to the futuristic and abstract. In doing so, she reminds us that radical feminism is both utopian vision and practical argument." - Counterpunch
"Learned and impassioned ... irreverent, scabrous and enraged, these manifestos also happen to be full of contradictions, written in the heat of the moment and without a cool eye to posterity. But it's this rough-hewn immediacy that makes some of them so bracing to read, especially now." - New York Times Book Review
"Editors' Choice" - The New York Times Book Review
"Powerful and inspiring" - Air Mail
"Magnificently cathartic...a reminder of the power and importance of taking a position, asserting your rights and expressing them forcefully - and that we can take strength from these positions, appreciate them, disagree, and argue the nuances with equal force and passion." - i newspaper
"Burn It Down sweeps through time and across the globe." - New Socialist
"Any Gender Studies professor who isn't teaching Burn It Down! is missing something important in their curriculum." - PopMatters (Best Books of 2020)
"An essential text for any time, but especially this one." - Journal of American Culture
