Mrs. Morris

Cohen is extremely insightful! She outlines the varying types of consumers and how the notion of consumption evolved over time. She digs way back to the Columbian Expositon and astutely explains how we shifted from a producer focused society where inventors manufactured the shiny new toys (ooooh look what I can do!) to one where something decidedly need to be done with all the new products (I know! Let's advertise and get people to buy!) The best part about Cohen's book is the themes throughout: She focuses on women's issues and the plight of African Americans. Her narrative is matter-of-fact and she makes no excuses for the marginalization of both groups. I loved this book!

The book is less about the rift between white and black feminist and more about the ills of the Black Power Movement as told by a white lady. This narrative reeks of a Becky-like female who indicts Black women who frowned upon white females dating black men. It is contradictory in a number of ways: one in particular is how Breines admits that black women understood comments like Stokely Carmichael's "a woman's position is prone" to be benign, only to state that two white women took up issues of sex. THEN in the same chapter makes claims to black feminism, such that Black women were content with uplifiting their men and subordinating themselves for the sake of black manhood. That is CONTRARY to feminism, and insignificant to her argument about why black feminists and white feminists could not coexist.