"This is an incredibly well-researched text. Pulling from governmental papers, personal papers, activist and mainstream publications and artistic writings from five countries, the author manages to give each of her subjects a distinct voice."—Journal of Social History
"With
Race Women Internationalists, Imaobong D. Umoren has given us a work of great originality, insight, and brilliance. This is a model of meticulous transnational scholarship that focuses not on a singular individual, but on a network of three committed, cosmopolitan intellectuals/activists—Eslanda Robeson, Paulette Nardal, and Una Marson—who together represent an even larger group of women who complicate received notions of black thought and activism. In so doing, Umoren highlights categories of analysis including travel, writing, and friendship, which enrich our understanding of these women and will certainly enhance future studies as well."—Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of
Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II "
Race Women Internationalists is fresh, innovative, and timely in its ambition and approach. Imaobong D. Umoren pioneers a model that blends the biographical, political, intellectual, and cultural. Black international studies will be the book’s great beneficiary."—Barbara D. Savage, Segal Professor of American Social Thought, Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania
“
Race Women Internationalists is a fascinating work that deepens our understanding of how Una Marson, Paulette Nardal, and Eslanda Robeson contributed to and shaped the various movements with which they engaged. Imaobong D. Umoren reveals the full extent of Robeson's work with the United Nations, Nardal’s networks with the women’s assembly, and Marson’s time in the United States during the turmoil of the Second Reconstruction.”—Dawn-Marie Gibson, author of
The Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, and the Men Who Follow Him"
Race Women Internationalists makes an important contribution to our understanding of black women as intellectuals and knowledge producers in the twentieth century. Focusing on the lives of exceptional women long overshadowed by the men they helped, Imaobong D. Umoren builds on important work by Jeanne Theoharis, Brittney C. Cooper, and Keisha Blain, which shows us how, and why, brilliant women are often hidden in plain sight."—Kate Dossett, author of
Bridging Race Divides: Black Nationalism, Feminism, and Integration in the United States, 1896–
1935
