Revisiting Herstories: The Young Lords Party

During the 1960s and 1970s, the Young Lords organized for the rights of Puerto Ricans in the United States and to end colonialism in Puerto Rico. Revisiting Herstories: The Young Lords Party examines the rise of feminism in the New York organization from 1969 to 1972 and the factors that advanced or derailed it. The book centers on women's activism and the battle of ideas vital to the group's liberatory politics, charting new ground in the Puerto Rican diaspora. Women in the Young Lords organized "serve the people" programs and fought institutionalized racism—lack of jobs, inadequate housing, police brutality, inferior education, and horrendous public health care. As nationalists, they mobilized for Puerto Rico's independence. They also brought attention to gender inequality and the oppression of Puerto Rican and other women of color. The book traces their challenges to male supremacist ideas, methods and institutions, the roadblocks and setbacks they encountered, and their achievements. In this seminal period for US feminists of color, the women in the Young Lords united with Black, Latinx, Asian and Indigenous women, rallied for reproductive rights, equal pay, and childcare, and protested sterilization abuse and gender violence, among other issues. Insisting capitalism, racism and sexism were interconnected systems of exploitation, they advocated for revolutionary, socialist feminism. They fought patriarchy, classism, racism, and imperialism to bring about systemic changes and a just society for everyone.