Women Who Change the World: Stories from the Fight for Social Justice

(Paperback)

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Inspiring oral histories of women fighting for justice and radical social change at community, state, and national levels.

Award-winning oral historian Lynn Lewis brings together the stories of nine exceptional women, from their earliest formative experiences to their current strategies as movement leaders, organizers, and cultural workers. Each chapter is dedicated to one activistMalkia Devich-Cyril, Priscilla Gonzalez, Terese Howard, Hilary Moore, Vanessa Nosie, Roz Pelles, Loretta Ross, Yomara Velez, and Betty Yu. Reflecting upon the path their lives have taken, they talk about their struggles and aspirations, insights and victories, and what keeps them in the fight for a better world.

The life stories of these inspiring women reveal the many ways the experience of injustice can catalyze resistance and a commitment to making change. They demonstrate how the relationships and bonds of collective struggle for the common good not only win justice, but create hope, love, and joy.

Reviews

I love this book. I love that every chapter is the voice of an incredible woman at the forefront of social justice, sharing her story directly with me and in her own words. And I love that each woman gave me new ideas about everything from organizing and family life to how I think about grief. This is a necessary and radical book for our collective futures.Daisy Hernndez, co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Todays Feminism

Women Who Change the World is oral history at its finest. The stories will draw you in; the profound insights about self-care, collective action, trauma, and power will stay with you.Amy Starecheski, author of Ours to Lose: When Squatters Became Homeowners in New York City

Lynn Lewiss longtime organizing experience, political insight, and loving heart shine brightly through this collection of oral histories. She introduces nine changemakers from across the United States whose lives reflect the intersection of personal experiences with the legacies of history. Each woman describes her transformative journey to becoming an activist and community builder. These inspiring accounts offer urgently needed ideas, strategies, and actions that women pursue to create a more just society.Iris Morales, author of Revisiting Herstories: The Young Lords Party

A bevy of brilliance and tactics to be learned and used by new and emerging generations of activists, Women Who Change the World is at once a gift of witness and a Social Justice master class for a world in need.Theodore Kerr, co-author of We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production

Lynn Lewiss book is a gift of cool clear water to a world parched of movement histories. If, as Dorothy Allison wrote, telling a story all the way through is an act of love, this collection is a great big hug for all those thirsting for inspiration. The women here are heroes, but as their oral histories reveal, heroes are all around us, made of regular and radical stuff. The voices here will stay with you: personal, political, persuasive.Laura Flanders, host of the Laura Flanders Show

This rich oral history collection of nine women social justice activists is a must-read for our challenging times. The narratives of these working-class leaders speak to the passions, struggles, deep knowledge, and love that shape their practices of resistance and organizing for a just world.Tarry Hum, author of Making a Global Immigrant Neighborhood: Brooklyns Sunset Park

Lynn Lewis has gifted us with a treasure of powerful narratives by nine brilliant, fierce, and caring women dedicated to social justicesome that I know, some I now know better, and some I want to know. Their individual and collective journeys leave me with radical hope that each of us can and will do what is necessary to keep changing the world.Lynn Roberts, co-editor of Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundation, Theory, Practice, Critique

Women indeed ARE changing the world! This truth comes through loud and clear, gently and subtly, humbly and proudly in the oral histories that make up Women Who Change the World, edited by Lynn Lewis. You have got to read the narratives of the nine powerful, fierce women organizers included in this oral history! They tell stories of true social justice heroines whose lives and actions are transforming society from the bottom up.Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, pastor, organizer, author, Director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice and Co-Chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

Lynn Lewis knows that listening and asking questions can spark a revolution. These stories contain all the clues we need to build a better world.James Tracy, co-author of No Fascist USA! The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee and Lessons for Todays Movements

This powerful collection of oral histories provides firsthand accounts of how social change is won through movement organizing. The women at the heart of this book share inspiring life stories behind the barricades, picket lines, and protests. It is a narrative of global resistance.Benjamin Dangl, author of The Five Hundred Year Rebellion: Indigenous Movements and the Decolonization of History in Bolivia

In Women Who Change the World, Lynn Lewis has worked in the grand oral history tradition of Studs Terkel and the Lomax Brothers, but with an explicitly feminist and intersectional lens. An outstanding collection harvested with great care, the women in this book remind us we are not alone in our struggles against empirethat we have contemporary sisters and ancestral mothers waiting to share plans for liberation. If we must love and support each other, as the great Assata Shakur is quoted in the introduction, a great way to start doing so is by listening to the stories Lewis presents in this powerful book and taking them as a call to action.Steven W. Thrasher, author of The Viral Underclass and former editor at the NPR StoryCorps project

Author Bio

Lynn Lewis (editor) is an oral historian, educator, and community organizer. She is the author of Love and Collective Resistance: Lessons from the Picture the Homeless Oral History Project and is the former executive director and past civil rights organizer at Picture the Homeless. Lewis is the recipient of many honors and awards, including a 2022/2023 National Endowment for the Humanities Oral History Fellowship. She lives in New York City.

Malkia Devich-Cyril (interviewee) is the founding director of the Media Justice, and co-founder of the Media Action Grassroots Network. Raised in New York City, Devich-Cyril now lives in Oakland, California.

Priscilla Gonzalez (interviewee) currently serves as the Program Director at the Center for Empowered Politics, a practitioner-led movement capacity organizations that trains and develops new leaders of color. Gonzalez now lives in West Texas.

Terese Howard (interviewee) is the founder of the former Denver Homeless Out Loud (DHOL), which was formed to defend the rights of people without housing targeted by the police. She is also the founder of Housekeys Action Network Denver focused on housing as a human right, and lives in Denver.

Hilary Moore (interviewee) was an environmental justice organizer with Rising Tide and Mobilization for Climate Justice West. She now works for Showing Up for Racial Justice, and lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Vanessa Nosie (interviewee) is a member of Apache Stronghold, a partner of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.

Roz Pelles (interviewee) is currently the Strategic Advisor to the Poor Peoples Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Pelles currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Loretta Ross (interviewee) has co-founded several groundbreaking organizations, coalitions, and formations with a Black feminist lens to ensure the inclusion of a radical Black womens perspective in feminist discourse. She teaches at Smith College in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender and curates the Feminist Oral History Project. Rosss latest book is Calling in the Calling Out Culture, and she resides in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Yomara Velez (interviewee) currently works with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, supporting the development of local organizing chapters across the U.S. Yomara was born in Massachusetts and grew up in Miami, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and the Bronx where she spent many years organizing. She currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Betty Yu (interviewee) is a co-founder of Chinatown Art Brigade, a cultural collective using art to advance anti-gentrification organizing, and teaches video, social practice, art and activism at Pratt Institute, Hunter College, and The New School. Betty was born and raised in New York City, and grew up in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where she lives today.