ABSTRACT
While I emphasised the importance of the black women’s movement in this process, not all black women were directly involved in the black women’s groups that it comprised. Many worked in black organisations with men as well as women, or in mainly white women’s groups, and a great many were never involved in any group or organisation, instead finding their own routes to personal change, through reading, study groups, or simply by responding to what was happening in and around them in the course of their early adulthood.
In considering the collective and historical processes of black women’s subjectivity, I have left aside the question of how individuals come to identify themselves in the ways that they do. This applies most obviously to women who have never participated in collectives, yet have still come to take up racialised and gendered positions, as a result of personal experiences.
