To Exist is to Resist: Black Feminism in Europe is an important book. As its editors, Akwugo Emejulu and Francesca Sobande, point out, “Too often, when we think about Black feminist theory and activism, we look to the particular Black American experience and seek to universalize and apply it to Europe” (5). The essays in To Exist is to Resist push back against the “hegemonic power” of the United States, whose cultural dominance extends to “crowd[ing] out . . . other histories and understandings of Blackness and resistance” (4–5). The essays highlight, instead, a long-standing Black feminism in Europe and the racial and racist dynamics particular to its national and imperial contexts.

Although writers based in northern European countries predominate, the contributions in To Exist is to Resist succeed in offering a rare and very valuable comparative overview of Black feminism across the continent. Imperialism, migration, and the global labor market shape all of Europe but often play out in distinct ways according to the national context. In Francophone regions, universalism remains influential and often problematic. Nicole Grégoire and Modi Ntambwe argue that “the mainstream predominantly white Belgian feminist movement . . . tends to consider that Afrofeminists are breaking down the supposed universality of the movement” (71). In France, the Mwasi Collectif was accused of “reverse racism” by the Socialist Party mayor of Paris when they organized an Afrofeminist festival in 2017 that hosted “Black and/or people of colour only workshops” (58). The racist online abuse that accompanied this veiled itself as French resistance to US cultural imperialism, when Mwasi were told to stop “pretending to be Americans” (58). Meanwhile, Johanna Melissa Lukate's chapter notes that “because of Germany's Nazi past, race is taboo,” yet this silence often results in German-ness being equated with whiteness (116). Oda-Kange Midtvåge Diallo, who undertook ethnographic fieldwork among a nationally diverse group of Black women in Copenhagen, found that “because race and especially Blackness is an issue which is rarely discussed in Denmark . . . the participants were relieved that they were finally able to voice their experiences in the company of other Black women” (219).

If the various local contexts produce particular forms of oppression they also produce, as Emejulu and Sobande point out, specific kinds of “resistances” (9). The book contains many different definitions of resistance and feminism, and some Black women find the latter term too tainted with racism to be of use (Nicole Grégoire and Modi Ntambwe, 70). The title of the book suggests the most expansive way of defining resistance, one that Sadiah Qureshi highlights in her “Manifesto for Survival” for Black and minority ethnic academics: “Exist and occupy space in the places from which others seek to exclude your kind. Sometimes the sheer fact of your existence can make a difference” (206). Midtvåge Diallo argues that “the strength to show up to work and school every day, writing papers, reading literature by white men, being graded by white men and women, being the only Black woman among one's peers is resistance in itself” (224). Community-building is another form of resistance discussed in chapters focusing on homemaking among Britons of Caribbean heritage (Gabriella Beckles-Raymond), African literature reading groups in Switzerland (Pamela Ohene-Nyako), and “the hair politics of women of colour in Germany” (Johanna Melissa Lukate, 117).

The world of online activism features as a particularly important space for building connections and collectivizing individual experiences. British writer and activist Claire Heuchan, creator of the blog Sister Outrider, strongly criticizes the “expectation that the proper feminism is what happens off-line” (79). This is to ignore the particular value that the digital world has for Black women, giving them access to the large audiences they have often been denied in traditional media and publishing. She also relates that “communicating digitally . . . enabled me to challenge the racism of feminist women without the embodied discomfort that comes with waiting to see whether your words will be heard and appreciated” (78). Another British writer, Kesiena Boom, also values the digital sphere as a place in which she is able to “validate myself as a source of valuable knowledge about how intersecting oppressions operate; and reassure other Black women that their dehumanising experiences of misogynoir were not unique to them” (245). But Boom also notes that writing “personal feminist essays” is emotionally taxing and can be a form of exploitation in itself given the “fixation by white editors on Black, female suffering” (245).

Everyday social spaces enabling solidarity between women of color and migrant women are also shown to be important foundations for more traditionally defined political activities. In her chapter on anti-austerity politics and domestic worker organizing in Madrid, Nadia Nadesan notes, “Demonstrations are made possible, safer and even more bearable by connecting with familiar faces on the streets” (42). Viki Zaphiriou-Zarifi looks at the United African Women's Organisation in Athens, which practiced “a kind of affective politics,” women getting together to share their individual problems, as part of its campaign in November 2005 for the right to birth certificates and citizenship for children born in Greece to migrant parents (14–17). I would have valued a more in-depth examination of the ways that various resistance practices lead to social change. Zaphiriou-Zarifi offers one view: “change can only be worked out or negotiated onto the basis of the given order . . . There is little to be gained by indulging in the “fantasy of godlike power” in which they can remake the world—UAWO works towards improving the situation of African women in Athens incrementally” (30). Emejulu and Sobande, on the other hand, define Black feminism as “a politics of liberation . . . revolutionary political action that imagines another world is possible beyond the plunder, exploitation and expropriation that are the bedrocks of liberal democracies” (1).

Although most of the chapters focus on contemporary feminism, Emejulu and Sobande emphasize the need to recognize the long history of Black feminism in Europe, which can be traced “back to the earliest days of slavery and colonialism. Where the historical record survives, we find the narratives of displaced and enslaved Black women analyzing the violence of their everyday lives and resisting those forces of dehumanization” (3). Cyn Awori Othieno and Annette Davis, writing on behalf of the Mwasi Collectif, express frustration with how they are often seen as having introduced Afrofeminism into France, when there are so many examples of Black women theorizing and organizing from the early twentieth century onwards (46, 51). A number of authors emphasize not only the importance of “connecting with our foremothers” (Chijioke Obasi, 239), but also of archiving their own political activism (Othieno and Davis; Ego Ahaiwe Sowinske and Nazmia Jamal; Dorett Jones).

Recognizing this much longer trajectory is not simply about countering erasure from the historical record, but also an important refutation of the common perception that Black feminism emerged only as a reaction to the racism of a white-dominated movement. Many of the contributors to the volume powerfully and painfully recount experiencing racism from white feminists or within seemingly progressive movements and institutions. For this white reader, the book served as an important reminder that a serious reckoning with this destructive legacy must never reduce Black feminism to “an afterthought or a derivative of white feminism” (Emejulu and Sobande, 4). To Exist is to Resist offers instead “radical counter-storytelling,” clearly demonstrating the political autonomy of Black feminism and how attention to its rich history and present requires us to tell a different kind of “European story” (Emejulu and Sobande, 6).