A very important book. While the book's intended audience are women of color, this is a must read for all white feminists.

Rubys experience in going viral and panicking and shutting down her Twitter account after an article she wrote went viral and her subsequent decision to log back on and stand up for her article and her beliefs is a powerful story. She goes deeper into how white feminism harms BIPOC women. She leans into a varying list of ways white women weaponize their emotions against people of colour and leave them having to carry the burden of our emotions. I loved this book, I think that it should be one of the NUMBER ONE books recommended to white women everywhere so we can take a long hard critical look at ourselves and how white supremacy benefits us and how we uphold it. It shows us how the media we consume uplifts it. How the people we support uplift it. How our refusal to listen to BIPOC people and LEARN history uphold it. And it forces us to see how we are responsible for the harm being done to women and people of colour.

White Tears/Brown Scars was a deeply uncomfortable and necessary read. Hamad explores so many facets of womanhood, history, and feminism and shows many examples of how white women have prioritized their whiteness over true feminist solidarity while telling women of color that they were breaking the sisterhood through discussing racism. I'm not a woman, I'm nonbinary, but I was raised as a woman and I'm perceived as a woman so this was still an important read and let's me reflect on how I interact with woman of color. This is a must read for anyone wearing the feminist label.

I really enjoyed this book. Such an incredible one that I highly recommend. Thank you for the opportunity to read/review.

White Tears, Brown Scars is absolutely a must read for every white woman (or just any quote person in general). Having an introductory knowledge of intersectional feminism helps but is not required for Amad does an excellent job of breaking everything down. Taking a global perspective, Amad reinforces her point over and over with perspectives from the entire world and many ethnic and racial groups to demonstrate how white supremacy and colonialism is not a singular occurrence but worldwide epidemic. The book remains highly readable, especially with the amount of personal anecdotes from multiple women Amad features in the text.

This is a book I know I’ll be putting in the hands of so many people!

This book was very good. I annotated a majority of the book. Hamad touches many cultures of women and how history and time have viewed them compared to the white woman. I appreciate the inclusion of the bibliography and notes at the end in order for allies to continue to pursue self-education and further research.

It takes me a little longer to read non-fiction books as I tend to read only about a chapter at a time to digest what I've read. This was an outstanding read in my opinion. While written more towards women of color, it's a book that white women should read. There were some lines that really spoke to me, the following as a sample “White women can oscillate between their gender and their race, between being the oppressed and the oppressor. Women of color are never permitted to exist outside of these constraints: we are both women and people of color and we are always seen and treated as such.” WOW

An urgent and necessary read for everyone. Delving into the history of various feminist movements and how they often center around white women to the exclusion of women of color, Hamad writes a provocative book that seeks to examine where we've been and where we can go. Mixing in personal experiences, anecdotes from her own life as well as acquaintances that have shared, alongside research and historical information This is an informative and important exploration into how we can reform feminism for now and in the future.

“Whiteness can and does exist even in the absence of white people.”

I really hope this quote stayed in the final copy because this hit hard. I’ve been expanding my reading material to more sociological topics, including BIPOC feminism like this title. The author does not keep to an American focus, but instead expands a look at the consequences of white feminism on a global scale. The author, who I believe wrote from Australia, makes significant observances on how white women, through the “gift of civilization,” participated in irreparably damaging the lives of Aboriginal Australians and their children.

The author doesn’t so much as blame these women, but accuses the indication that white women are the damsels that are the kind face in opposition to the sternness of their male counterparts. This is a must read for anyone looking to understand current (see: ongoing but now accepted to notice) issues, both in the United States and across the globe.

White Tears/Brown Scars is a book that white women need to read. It's not the job of BIPOC women to teach white women about the harm they cause, but we are lucky that authors like Ruby Hamad create books like this one so learning can happen.

It is a book that grapples with how the patriarchy weaponizes white women, and how white women have perpetuated campaigns of oppression.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts are my own.

I was a really big fan of this book and it made my favorite list of the year. As an Arab person, it was refreshing to read an expansive and interdisciplinary account of racism and whiteness with special attention to Arab people drawn throughout the book. We are often not included in social justice discussions around race. Hamad does so well to include the experiences and histories of other women of color to strengthen her claims about whiteness and white feminism, specifically by showing all the ways that white feminism is and has been a weaponization of white supremacy. Her research grounds this in great ways that span disciplines across the globe, with unique insight into Aboriginal history as well, something that hasn't been in the spotlight as much either.

Thank you to Catapult Press for the review copy!

Ruby Hamad had a moment of panic when an article she wrote for The Guardian went viral. The article was about white women's tears and how they are often used as a weapon in white feminism against people of color. She shut down her Twitter account briefly out of fear of being attacked. She brought her account back online in order to stand behind her work.

In this, her first book, Hamad expands on the ideas from her essay and talks about white feminism and how it impacts women of color. Hamad herself is Arab so has some personal experience being on the "outside" of some aspects of white feminism. The book is well-researched with lots of cases across different ethnicities. the book is eye-opening and important for women to read, particularly white women, so they can understand how some actions that they may perceive as being helpful to women are not in fact helpful to all women.

I suppose there isn't much for me to say on this one, given that the entire critical lens borders on farce more often than not. Will we still be reading this book in ten years? No way. Will it incense a few folks and wind up on a couple bookshelves? Maybe, but we can hope against it.

I recieved a free copy from netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
This books is a must read for all women. Many women of color have experienced the ideas expressed in this book and the concept of White Womanhood but Hamad makes a clear historical argument that doesn't feel like chore to slog through.
I cannot explain how much what this books says connects with me. I think that everyone needs to read and experience this book themselves.

This book explores the role that white women have played in racial segregation in the past, and how they may still be perpetrating their role today. White women Tears are both literal and figurative in this treatise. Sometimes the book ventured into topics unrelated to the title of the book but the history and discussion in the book is worth the errant stroll.

"White women's tears have little effect on white men...because they were never designed to implicate white men." - Ruby Hamad

This was a fascinating read, and should be a must-read for white women. This book looks at race and gender in a completely different way. It shows how white women have been given every advantage, often at the expense of women of color. I loved how this book examined the perspective of individual groups, and not just women of color as a whole. We see perspectives from Black, Asian, Native/Indigenous, and Latina women.

At some points the material in this book gets a little heavy, and often reads more like a research paper, but overall it was a great read and I highly recommend.

I learned so much from reading this book. It took me a lot longer to finish it than a book this length usually does, because I felt like I needed to pause for several days at various points to mull over the author's insights. I highly recommend this for anyone who is interested in the intersectionality of racism and feminism.

This book thoughtfully and thoroughly examines the ways white women's perceived vulnerability and emotions are weaponized against people of color, women in particular. With videos of white women like "BBQ Becky" going viral, it's important to unpack the history and strategy of white women's tears. This is a crucial component of understanding how white women are complicit in white supremacy, even those of us who consider ourselves progressive feminists. Hamad deftly argues that white women are responsible for learning the power of their emotions and using that knowledge to fight against white supremacy in themselves and others. My only concern is that I wish Hamad had utilized a more expansive understanding of gender and looked at how trans and gender non-conforming people fit into her argument. But otherwise, a very enlightening and powerful book.

There is no way on earth that my review is going to give this book proper justice - it is a brilliant, deeply researched, extremely well-written, and important book that I would recommend to everyone.

White Tears/Brown Scars is an absolutely necessary read. Ruby Hamad has created a detailed overview of white supremacy through the ages, and how white women have not only benefited from this system of dominance, but also actively engaged in it (as much as we pretend that we have not, we all have). The author weaves together historical and current facts, events, and also personal experiences from a variety of different women of color that she has interviewed. The content is highly readable, but it makes for a very uncomfortable read (even if you have read anti-racist work before). Necessarily uncomfortable. The book focuses on how the white woman and white feminism have created and enforced division all over the world and continue to do so today. The author focuses on several areas in the world, such as the US, Australia, western Europe, the Middle East, and South Africa and Zimbabwe, which I found to be very eye-opening and helpful.

I took so many notes, highlighted so many quotes, and have a lot of thinking to do. This is an essential read for any white woman who is intent on destroying the divisions created by white supremacy and white feminism, and doing the real work of listening, absorbing, admitting to our inability to say we are wrong, and actually learning to stand with women of color rather than just pretending to. We have so much work to do.

I really appreciated how the author discusses the history of Aborginal women in Australia, as well as Arab women in the world. These are important perspectives, and I feel like I learnt a lot of new information that I need to unpack and unlearn. (Even the whole concert of “Middle East” and why we still refer to a large area of different countries, cultures, languages and dialects, and people by that name). I also really appreciated how Ruby Hamad details certain events that are specific to the US, explaining how they also directly affect the world in general (for example US presidential elections). There is an excellent discussion of the 2016 elections in the US in the second half of the book where the author focuses on how alienating it was for Arab women (amongst other women of color) when Clinton was channelled as the change the world needed, and any criticism of her was categorized as sexism or wanting Trump to win. I was personally never “with her” because she reminded me too much of Margaret Thatcher (and all that that implies), but I would still have voted for her if I were able to vote in this country. White, liberal feminism really still does a great job of stomping out any criticism that may hinder what white, liberal feminism wants, and this usually involves shaming anyone who is not white to toe the line so to speak, without actually listening to their experience and needs.

In the conclusion Ruby Hamad poses some very important questions to white women, and asks that we start answering them. We have helped perpetuate stereotypes over the ages (from the Jezebel to the Angry Black Woman and so many more), we have remained happy with the status quo as we benefit from it, and we have also actively engaged in perpetrating dominance over others in the name of feminism/religion/racial divides and so on. And when confronted with this we often break down in tears with the intention of removing ourselves from the conversation without actively making any changes to the way we act. We have a choice to make, and we have to be accountable for our past, present, and our future.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

TL;DR REVIEW:

White Tears/Brown Scars is a thoughtfully researched, convincingly argued, incredibly important book that should be required reading for white people everywhere.

For you if: You are white, especially if you are a white cisgender woman.

FULL REVIEW:

“The harms caused by the gender binary can and have filled volumes of books on their own. However, rarely has it been explicitly noted that this binary, not only marginalizes those who don’t fall neatly into either category regardless of their race, but is itself one of the ways in which whiteness has maintained its domination.”

First of all, huge thanks to Catapult for providing me with an advanced copy of this book. I will be shoving it into people’s hands for many years.

What I expected from this book was a cultural examination of the way white women use tears to avoid confronting racism. I got that, but I also got so, so much more. This book is a deeply researched account of the history of white womanhood’s role in colonization, racism, and oppression — and its lingering effects today. It reads a little academically, but clearly and convincingly. If you were called to act by Hood Feminism and now want to learn more deeply about the history of the weaponization of white womanhood — this is absolutely the book for you.

Ruby Hamad has written a globally focused book, with most attention paid to the United States and Australia. It focuses on white supremacy in general against people, most often specifically women, of color from all parts of the world — Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Arab, and more. This alone taught me much about the oppression of people of color in places outside the United States (as well as inside it).

There is so much for me to internalize from this book. Right now, I continue to think deeply about Hamad’s revelation that white women hold the power to weaponize their white womanhood against everyone but white men. About the role white women played in false rape and sexual assault claims against men of color — think even of a simple imagined whistle by Emmett Till — and how we have struggled to escape the lingering repercussions of being in cahoots with the white patriarchy in this way, for example with society’s refusal to believe (or act upon) Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony against Brett Kavanaugh.

This book was a mirror I desperately needed to look into. White women like to think that women are all “on the same side” against sexism and patriarchy — it’s more comfortable for us, a way to feel good about our place in the world. But it’s a lie. It’s been a lie for all of history, and if we keep ignoring it, we will never fix what’s wrong with our attitudes, beliefs, and actions.