The Soulwork Reading List: Seminal Books for community Liberation & Vocation

Join the Soulwork Reading Challenge on StoryGraph: An Always-On Journey to Liberation

Soulwork is collective care—a radical practice of healing, resistance, and reimagining systems that were never built for Black women, marginalized genders, disabled folks, or queer communities. It’s the labor of tending to our spirits while dismantling the crooked rooms of capitalism, patriarchy, ableism, and digital extraction.

This reading list is your toolkit. These books are blueprints for liberation. They center our stories, honor our labor, and light the path to building communities where everyone can actually thrive.

1. Foundations: The Theory of Soulwork

1. Sister Citizen by Melissa Harris-Perry
A cornerstone for understanding the “crooked room” of race, gender, and sexuality—the societal distortions that force Black women to contort themselves to fit oppressive systems. Harris-Perry’s analysis of shame, stereotypes, and resilience is a manifesto for reclaiming agency.

2. Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins
Collins’ framework of intersectionality and self-definition is the bedrock of soulwork. She teaches us to center our lived experiences as a form of knowledge and resistance, rejecting Eurocentric hierarchies that erase Black women’s genius.

3. Digital Black Feminism by Catherine Knight Steele
How do Black women bend technology toward liberation? Steele traces our digital counterpublics—from Black Twitter to encrypted group chats—showing how we build community in spaces never meant to hold us.

Follow along with the essential Soulwork Reading List

2. Reclaiming Labor, Rest, and Boundaries

4. Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab
A guide to protecting your energy in a world that demands Black women’s unpaid labor. Tawwab’s work is a soulwork staple for anyone learning to say “no” without guilt.

5. Rock My Soul by bell hooks
Hooks confronts the toll of systemic violence on Black self-esteem, urging us to reclaim joy and wholeness. Pair this with Audre Lorde’s A Burst of Light for a masterclass in radical self-care.

6. Household Workers Unite by Premilla Nadasen
A groundbreaking history of domestic workers’ organizing, from the Jim Crow South to modern-day movements. Nadasen shows how Black women have transformed undervalued labor into a site of resistance and solidarity. This book is a must-read for soulworkers redefining the value of care work.

7. Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
A prophetic novel about climate collapse, community-building, and the audacity to believe in a future shaped by equity. Butler’s protagonist, Lauren Oya Olamina, models soulwork in motion: “God is change. Shape God.”

3. Ancestral Wisdom and Radical Imagination

8. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Janie Crawford’s journey to self-discovery—through love, loss, and reclaiming her voice—is a soulwork anthem. Hurston reminds us that liberation begins with telling our own stories, on our own terms.

9. Afrocentricity by Molefi Kete Asante
A call to center African philosophies and histories in a world that dismisses them. Asante’s work fuels soulworkers building systems rooted in dignity, not exploitation.

10. All the Black Girls Are Activists by EbonyJanice Moore
Moore reframes activism as a daily practice of survival and creativity. This isn’t a handbook for hashtags—it’s a love letter to Black women’s relentless power to transform the mundane into the revolutionary.

4. Queer & Disability Justice: Systems of Care and Collective Survival

11. Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
A groundbreaking text that centers disabled queer and trans Black/brown voices, redefining “care” beyond capitalist, ableist frameworks. Piepzna-Samarasinha’s vision of mutual aid—rooted in disability justice—is a lifeline for soulworkers building communities that prioritize access, interdependence, and radical tenderness.

12. The Future Is Disabled by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Another essential from the same author, this book expands on disability justice as a practice of collective survival and joy. It’s a manifesto for queers, crips, and survivors crafting futures where care is liberation.

13. Exile and Pride by Eli Clare
A disabled queer classic that connects environmental destruction, bodily autonomy, and the politics of place. Clare’s work is a compass for soulworkers navigating the intersections of ableism, capitalism, and queer liberation.

5. Bonus: Soulwork in Practice

14. The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor
Radical self-love as political resistance. Taylor’s work is a compass for dismantling internalized oppression and reclaiming our bodies as sites of power.

15. Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown
Because joy is a birthright. Brown teaches us to center pleasure in our movements, rejecting grind culture’s lie that suffering equals solidarity.

Conclusion: Build Your Soulwork Syllabus
These books are not just to be read—they’re to be lived. Start a soulwork circle. Host a chapter swap at your local café. Trade dog-eared copies with your chosen family. Liberation is not a solo journey; it’s a chorus.

And remember: support Black-owned, queer-owned, and disability-led bookstores. Buy these titles from Sistah Scifi, Cafe con Libros, or The Lit. Bar. Because soulwork begins with who we fund, not just what we read.

Now go build your own library of liberation. The crooked room is waiting to be dismantled—one book, one soul, one collective breath at a time. 📚✨

join the Soulwork Reading Challenge on storygraph! Get Started Today

By engaging with these texts, you’re building a toolkit for liberation. You’re honoring the labor of Black women and marginalized genders, reclaiming your narrative, and joining a community of soulworkers committed to collective care.

There’s no deadline, no pressure—just an open invitation to read, reflect, and grow. Whether you’re a seasoned reader or just beginning your soulwork journey, this challenge is for you.

Share your journey: Use #SoulworkReadingChallenge to connect with others.

Let’s build a world where care > capitalism, rest > grind, and liberation > extraction. One book, one soul, one collective breath at a time. 📚✨

Beyond Algorithms: Building Systems for Black Women by going hood viral

When Equal Opportunity protections were rolled back and DEI initiatives banned at the federal level, I laughed.

Not a joyful laugh, but one of those bitter, exhausted chuckles. the kind that bubbles up when absurdity threatens to overwhelm you. I wasn’t surprised; most of us weren’t. Watching institutions that once flaunted their “commitment to diversity” backpedal as soon as it became inconvenient isn’t cynicism; it’s pattern recognition.

The history of this country has taught us—repeatedly—that every time we gain ground, the goalposts move. After every victory, there is a backlash. After every step forward, there are institutional mechanisms designed to push us back. But in this cycle, there is also a subtle undercurrent of hope, one that persists in the hearts of Black women and femmes who have seen this before. We’ve learned how to build, to adapt, and to innovate, even when the systems around us threaten to collapse.

This is where soulwork comes in. Soulwork is the intentional practice of building systems of care, resistance, and liberation that center the lived experiences of Black women and marginalized genders. Soulwork is about creating spaces—both digital and physical—where our stories, labor, and well-being are prioritized over profit and performance.

The Problem: Systems That Fail Us

As DEI initiatives vanish and government policies strip away critical resources, the platforms we’ve relied on to organize and resist are also failing us. Social media—once heralded as a democratizing force—is crumbling under the weight of biased algorithms and profit-driven models. It is getting harder and harder to do any kind of work at all, much less the kind of work our souls must have

Algorithms Aren’t Neutral, and Platforms Aren’t Allies

The infrastructure of these platforms was never designed with liberation in mind. Safiya Umoja Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression reveals that search engines and social media platforms are not neutral tools but active architects of oppression. They amplify division, sensationalism, and misinformation while suppressing dissent—especially voices advocating for marginalized communities (Noble). Algorithms encode racism and sexism into their systems, privileging whiteness and punishing dissent. For example, they routinely associate Black women’s identities with pornographic content or criminality, reinforcing harmful stereotypes while erasing our humanity.

As Catherine Knight Steele argues in Digital Black Feminism, Black women have repurposed technology for resistance, but we’re fighting systems engineered to undermine us (Steele). When #BlackLivesMatter trends, platforms profit from the engagement while refusing to protect users from racist harassment. When we share stories of police violence, algorithms shadowban our posts or flag them as “sensitive content.”

Recent examples underscore this reality:

• In January 2025, U.S. health systems began phasing out race-based clinical algorithms under federal anti-discrimination rules. Yet, many tools using race, sex, or protected traits remain in a regulatory “gray area,” perpetuating inequities in healthcare access and outcomes . This mirrors Noble’s critique: biased tech entrenches systemic oppression, demanding ownership of narratives and systems.

• The SAVE Act (HR 22), introduced in January 2025, imposes strict voter registration requirements (e.g., in-person documentation), disproportionately disenfranchising Black women, low-income individuals, and people of color. This legislation mirrors historical voter suppression tactics and underscores the urgency of building alternative political infrastructures, such as mutual aid networks and community-led voter drives .

Noble reminds us that “technology is only as benevolent as the humans who create it”—and those humans have rarely included Black women or marginalized genders (Noble). Our liberation cannot be confined to a digital cage controlled by corporate interests.

The Evolution of Community Architecture: Three Waves of Resistance

To understand where we’re headed, it’s essential to reflect on how we’ve built community so far. Catherine Knight Steele’s Digital Black Feminism and Melissa Harris-Perry’s Crooked Room theory illuminate this journey. Steele shows how Black women are the most genertive users of technology for liberation, while Harris-Perry’s metaphor—the “crooked room” of race, gender, and sexuality—reveals how societal structures force Black women to contort ourselves to fit systems never designed for our thriving. Soulwork expands this theory, arguing that labor under capitalism is its own crooked room: a system that extracts Black women’s physical, emotional, and creative labor while denying us equitable returns. Each wave of resistance responds to these distortions, striving to reorient us toward liberation.

Wave 1: Visibility at Any Cost

The first wave of modern community-building was about visibility. Hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName served as digital “call and response,” rooted in Black oral traditions. They amplified issues ignored by mainstream media, offering a global stage for our voices. These movements created spaces where we could bring our grief, pain, and resistance to the forefront of global consciousness.

But visibility came at a cost. Algorithms commodified these movements, prioritizing virality over nuance or sustained engagement. While we gained attention, structural change lagged behind. Platforms thrived on spectacle, not liberation. This wave showed us the power of digital visibility but exposed the limitations of platforms not built for systemic change.

The Crooked Room of Labor & Visibility

Even as we fought for visibility, we collided with capitalism’s crooked room. Black women’s labor—organizing movements, creating content, educating allies—was exploited by platforms that monetized our trauma while offering little compensation or protection. Black only facebook groups were infiltrated, Black women’s thought leadership was coopted and repackaged. The state, too, weaponized visibility: performative allyship replaced material investment in our communities. This wave revealed a paradox: visibility without ownership is another form of extraction.

Wave 2: The Rise of Authenticity

The second wave emerged as a response to the commodification of visibility. Black women and femmes began rejecting performative activism, turning instead toward authenticity. Platforms became spaces for raw, vulnerable storytelling—a radical act of reclaiming how we are seen and heard. This wave was about reconnecting with our humanity, sharing our stories without the filters of respectability or performance. We were no longer just hashtags; we were people with complex lives, struggles, and victories.

Yet even this wave had its limitations. Algorithms exploited our labor and emotions, and while personal stories foster connection, they alone cannot dismantle systems of oppression. meta released AI profiles in January of 2025 that they were forced to get rid of amidst pressure. Utilizing the scraped content of actual Black women to depict a caricature of Black womanhood to speak for black women to the masses. The commodification of authenticity is still commodification.

The Crooked Room of Emotional Labor

Here, the crooked room shifted shape. Capitalism demands that Black women perform authenticity as a product—our pain, joy, and resilience packaged for consumption. Emotional labor became currency: therapizing others, moderating trauma, and performing vulnerability for clicks. Meanwhile, systemic inequities in pay, healthcare, and housing persisted. This wave taught us that authenticity without structural power is a trap—one that leaves us overworked, underpaid, and gaslit by systems that praise our “resilience” while denying us rest.

Wave 3: Soulful, Intentional Community-Building

Now, we are in the third wave. This wave is about balance: merging the reach of digital platforms with the intentionality of grassroots organizing. We’re returning to what Steele calls “counterpublics,” or spaces of resistance that exist outside dominant systems (Steele). These counterpublics are generative. They are where we cultivate new ideas, form solidarities, and reimagine the world we want to live in.

This third wave of community architecture centers on creating hybrid systems. Movements that are part digital, part physical, all intentional. Online spaces become extensions of localized, soulful work. These systems don’t just amplify; they sustain, nourish, and protect.

Soulwork confronts capitalism’s distortions head-on. If the state and corporations demand we “straighten ourselves” to fit their systems—accepting exploitative wages, unsustainable workloads, and transactional relationships—we respond by building our own rooms.

Building Systems Beyond Algorithms

As DEI initiatives vanish and algorithms suppress dissent, we cannot rely on institutions or platforms to support us. Instead, we must build our own systems of care and communication. This work requires us to look beyond digital tools and engage in community building that is rooted in tangible, real-world impact.

This isn’t a new concept. Our ancestors built community in quilting circles, kitchens, and church basements. They innovated within constraints, creating networks of care and resistance at the bus stop and the beauty salon. Today, technology allows us to amplify those traditions—but only if we use it intentionally. We need to remember the power of face-to-face connections, mutual aid, and resource-sharing. The digital realm can expand these efforts, but it cannot replace them.

Ruha Benjamin’s Viral Justice offers a framework for this work: small, deliberate actions that grow over time to create systemic change. By combining digital tools with soul-centered strategy, we can turn fleeting moments of virality into lasting impact (Benjamin).

In this moment, the metrics we’ve been taught to value (likes, shares, impressions) feel increasingly hollow. They don’t challenge the systems of oppression that keep us at the margins. The true power lies not in how viral a post can become, but in the deep, sustained impact of collective action.

Soulful Strategy: Rechanneling Viral Energy

In this moment, the metrics we’ve been taught to value (likes, shares, impressions) feel increasingly hollow. They don’t put food on the table, secure healthcare, or create safe spaces for our communities. For Black women entrepreneurs in NYC—the hairstylists, doulas, artists, and healers building businesses in the shadows of Wall Street’s greed—the true power lies not in virality, but in deep, sustained impact. To move forward, we must focus on:

1. Ownership Over Our Narratives

We need platforms and spaces that honor our stories without exploiting them. For small businesses and grassroots organizations, this means:

• Rejecting corporate storytelling: Create your own media, like Bed-Stuy’s Black-Owned Brooklyn podcast, which amplifies local entrepreneurs without watering down their truths.

• Community archives: Partner with grassroots hubs like the Weeksville Heritage Center to document your work in spaces that center Black legacy, not Silicon Valley’s memory hole.

• Physical spaces as resistance: Turn your storefront, salon, or studio into a sanctuary. Harlem’s SisTers’ Uptown Bookstore doesn’t just sell books—it hosts writing circles where Black women reclaim their narratives, free from algorithmic surveillance.

For Black women as individuals, ownership means refusing to shrink your voice to fit LinkedIn’s respectability politics or Instagram’s trauma porn economy. Your story is not to be used for others to profit from in ways that you do not

2. Redistributing Labor and Resources

The emotional and cultural labor expected of Black women and femmes is often invisible and uncompensated. For NYC’s small businesses and solopreneurs:

• Cooperative models: Follow the lead of NYC’s Black Women-owned co-ops (e.g., childcare collectives in the Bronx), which pool resources and rotate leadership to prevent burnout.

• Pay transparency: Adopt wage-sharing frameworks like Crown Heights’ The Wing’s “No Secrets” pay scale, where salaries are public and equity is non-negotiable.

• Mutual aid as infrastructure: Join networks like the free black womens library where Black women collect menstrual products, and attend free skillshare sessions.

For individuals, this means demanding compensation for your labor, full stop. The coworker who asks you to “just quickly” explain microaggressions? The friend who wants free branding advice for their startup? Send them an invoice or a link to your Venmo. Your labor is not charity.

3. Intentional, Hybrid Systems

By merging digital influence with grassroots organizing, we can create hybrid systems that prioritize care, accessibility, and liberation. For NYC businesses:

• Analog-first, digital-second: Brooklyn’s Cafe Con Libros hosts author talks in-person, then shares recordings via a subscriber-only Patreon—no ads, no trolls, no censorship.

• Algorithm-free zones: Use SMS newsletters (like Queens-based Blk + Grn) to connect with customers directly, bypassing Instagram’s shadowbanning.

• Pop-up power: Rotate your “storefront” between stoops, subway ads, and social media.

For individuals, hybridity means building your own “soulwork syllabus”: Attend a Bronx tenant rights rally on Saturday, then join a encrypted Discord for Black femme writers on Monday. Liberation lives in the interplay between streets and screens.

Why This Matters for NYC

New York’s grind culture tells Black women to hustle harder—to monetize every passion, to “scale” every side gig into a empire. But soulwork is about alignment. It’s the barber in Flatbush who closes shop every Tuesday to mentor girls at the YMCA. It’s the astrologer in Harlem who barters birth chart readings for groceries. It’s me, the Black woman in Queens, who quit corporate America, to apply her skills to small local organizations. It’s the rejection of the lie that all work is exploitative. We can work ourselves free.

When we own our narratives, redistribute labor, and build hybrid systems, we’re dismantling capitalism’s crooked room. Brick by brick, block by block.

The Future Is Ours to Build

This third wave of community architecture is about creating spaces where we can thrive. When we center the pain, power, and complexity of the most marginalized among us, we transform the digital landscape into fertile ground for connection and change.

New York City, with its long history of innovation and resistance, feels like the perfect place to anchor this work. The future is not something we wait for—it’s something we build. And as Black women and femmes, we’ve always known how to build. Together, we will create systems of care, healing, and liberation. Not because it’s easy, but because it’s necessary.

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The Death of DEI

So. DEI is dead, but why? How did we get here?

Before we ask how we got here, we need to understand where here is.

To understand the unraveling of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, we must examine the key moments that chart this decline. A timeline of broken promises and systemic regression that brought us to this point.

2020: Corporate Pledges, Performative Activism, and the Remote Work Revolution

The summer of 2020 was marked by an outpouring of public support for racial equity in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Corporations, eager to align themselves with the rising tide of social justice, pledged billions of dollars to DEI initiatives. Campaigns spotlighting Black voices proliferated, along with hiring surges for Chief Diversity Officers and the expansion of Employee Resource Groups.

Simultaneously, the COVID-19 pandemic forced a historic shift to remote work, reshaping the labor landscape. While remote work created opportunities for flexibility and access for some marginalized groups, it also exposed and exacerbated existing inequities. Black and brown workers disproportionately represented in essential industries faced greater health risks, while those working remotely often contended with a lack of support for caregiving responsibilities and digital accessibility.

Even as these dual crises unfolded, many corporate promises proved performative at best. Studies . It has since been revealed that much of the money pledged was either never allocated or funneled into short-term projects with little structural impact. DEI efforts became more about optics than systemic change, as corporations profited from the language of justice while avoiding meaningful accountability.

The pandemic highlighted another layer of inequity: those in privileged positions could retreat to the safety of their homes, while others, often from marginalized communities, were forced to endure unsafe working conditions to sustain the economy.

2022: The Overturning of Roe v. Wade

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade dealt a devastating blow to reproductive rights, especially for Black people able to give birth. This ruling exacerbated systemic inequities, disproportionately impacting those already marginalized by race, gender, and class. Black women, overrepresented in low-wage and precarious jobs, faced compounding vulnerabilities as access to reproductive healthcare dwindled, often in states with the most restrictive abortion bans.

The rollback of reproductive freedoms set dangerous legal precedents, calling into question the security of other hard-won rights, such as access to contraception, same-sex marriage, and anti-discrimination protections (which have since been rolled back by executive order). Activists and legal scholars warned that this decision signaled the judiciary’s willingness to unravel decades of progress on civil rights and gender equity.

Black women activists sounded the alarm, expressing fears rooted in lived experiences and historical precedent. we emphasized how the erosion of reproductive rights echoed the control of Black women’s bodies during slavery, where autonomy was systematically denied. I personally gave talks and produced corporate events in the wake of the Dobbs decision. I and many others questioned whether the DEI commitments made by corporations in 2020 could meaningfully address the intersection of reproductive justice, labor equity, and racial oppression.

2023: Attacks on CRT and Affirmative Action

The year 2023 saw a surge of anti-critical race theory (CRT) legislation and a landmark Supreme Court decision dismantling affirmative action in education. These efforts, framed as a backlash against so-called “woke ideology,” reflected a growing hostility toward any attempts to address systemic racism.

Corporations began to distance themselves from their DEI commitments, citing “woke fatigue” and shifting economic priorities. Many Chief Diversity Officers quietly exited their roles, and budgets for DEI initiatives were slashed. The performative activism of 2020 was laid bare as companies abandoned equity commitments the moment they became inconvenient.

2024: A Crisis Point in DEI Leadership

Dr. Antoinette "Bonnie" Candia-Bailey, a DEI leader and Vice President for Student Affairs at Lincoln University, tragically died by suicide amidst allegations of workplace harassment and bullying. Her death sparked national conversations about the toll of institutional racism, the unique burdens placed on Black women in DEI roles, and the urgent need for mental health resources in the field.

Her passing highlights the stark contrast between performative DEI efforts and the lived realities of those fighting for systemic change, underscoring the emotional labor and personal risks involved in this work. Meanwhile, media outlets and news pundits began reporting that DEI Efforts were “mostly garbage”. 

2025: Executive Rollbacks and Corporate Complicity

Within his first week back in office, President Donald Trump signed a slew of executive orders dismantling key Equal Employment Opportunity protections including executive order 1146 of 1965 signed by former President Lyndon B. Johnson and reinstating Schedule-F. These policies, designed to prevent workplace discrimination on the basis of race, gender, and other marginalized identities, were a lifeline for many.

With this rollback, employers have more power to discriminate—more power to hire, fire, and promote based on biases they no longer need to justify.

And all the while, American citizens were reeling from news coverage of multiple concurrent genocides in Gaza, Hati, and The Congo. Sparking worldwide conversations about US involvement in Israel and Palestine relations. 

How Did We Get to 2020?

To move forward, we must first rewind even further back. The roots of today’s crisis stretch back to the 1970s, a decade marked by dramatic shifts in corporate and political power. During this era, major financial institutions and corporations began to assert greater influence over public policy and the economy.

This was a pivotal moment in the consolidation of corporate power. As banks and corporations began to take over the political process, they co-opted the language of justice, equality, and progress for their own gain. Instead of fostering genuine social change, these entities used performative activism and media distortion to bolster their image as champions of social justice, even as they lobbied for policies that perpetuate inequality. The rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s, which shifted the focus from collective liberation to individual survival, set the stage for what Alexei Yurchak, a professor of anthropology,  terms hypernormalisation.

 According to Yurchack, hypernormalisation refers to a phenomenon where many people within a system can recognize that it is failing, but no one seems able to imagine any alternative to the status quo. In this reality, politicians and citizens alike are resigned to maintaining the pretense of a functioning society. Over time, the mass delusion became a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the masses accepting it as the new norm rather than a source for abolition, reform, or critical thought.

As corporations gained a firmer foothold in politics, they began shaping public perception through media manipulation. The rise of corporate PR campaigns in the 1970s helped construct the narrative of progress while obscuring the underlying economic inequalities that were deepening. The media, instead of challenging corporate power, often served as a mouthpiece, promoting stories of corporate success while diverting attention away from growing economic disparity. By the time DEI initiatives were introduced decades later, the corporate machinery that shaped public policy was already in place—able to present diversity and inclusion as progress, even when these initiatives often failed to address the structural inequalities that lay at the heart of society’s ills.

The intersection of media distortion, corporate power, and hypernormalisation created a society where true social change appeared increasingly unattainable. Just as media and corporate PR in the 1970s distorted public perceptions of progress, the hypernormalisation of DEI initiatives in the 2020s cultivated the illusion of racial equity. The media and corporate messaging suggested that the promise of diversity and inclusion was enough, leading to widespread resignation, particularly among those most affected by systemic oppression. Black women, MaGes, and other marginalized groups, who had long been at the forefront of resistance, were left to grapple with a system that offered only symbolic change and hollow promises.

Black women and Labor

The relationship between Black women and labor in the United States has been fraught with exploitation, neglect, and resistance. From slavery, where Black women’s labor was extracted for free, to Reconstruction and the post-Civil Rights era, Black women have been systematically marginalized in economic structures. This marginalization continues today in various forms, with Black women often occupying the lowest-paying, least secure jobs.

For instance, according to a 2020 study by the National Women’s Law Center, Black women in the United States are paid just 63 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men. This wage gap is even wider for Black women who are mothers, earning only 53 cents on the dollar compared to white, non-Hispanic fathers. This stark economic disparity illustrates a long-standing toxic relationship between Black women and labor, in which our contributions are undervalued despite their critical role in sustaining the workforce.

Today, Black women remain overrepresented in industries that are both low-wage and underregulated. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Black women make up a significant portion of the essential workforce in sectors like healthcare, education, and service industries. These sectors are notoriously underpaid and often fail to provide the benefits and protections necessary for workers’ well-being. As of 2021, 60% of Black women worked in service-related jobs, a sector plagued by poor wages and limited opportunities for advancement.

Additionally, a 2021 report from the Economic Policy Institute found that Black women have consistently faced higher rates of unemployment compared to white women. In 2020, the unemployment rate for Black women was 11.4%, compared to 8.1% for white women, a disparity that highlights the systemic barriers preventing Black women from accessing stable, well-paying work. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these issues, as Black women were more likely to be employed in sectors hardest hit by the crisis, leading to disproportionate job losses and economic instability.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade, the erosion of workplace protections, and ongoing economic exploitation compound the historical inequalities that Black women have faced in the labor market. Moreover, Black women are often left out of the conversations surrounding labor reforms, despite being at the forefront of efforts to challenge exploitative practices. The modern-day relationship between Black women and labor remains one of resistance, but also survival within a system that continues to devalue our contributions.

The Emotional and mental work

Beyond the financial and structural barriers, Black women are also tasked with significant emotional and mental labor. This mental strain is rooted in our constant need to navigate oppressive systems while advocating for ourselves and others. A 2021 study by the American Psychological Association found that Black women experience significantly higher levels of stress and mental health issues related to workplace discrimination than their white counterparts. Over 40% of Black women report experiencing discrimination at work, contributing to burnout, anxiety, and depression.

These emotional burdens are compounded by the intersectional discrimination Black women face, where both race and gender are leveraged as tools of oppression. For example, a 2019 report from the Center for American Progress showed that Black women are subjected to both racial and gendered microaggressions in the workplace, which not only affect their mental and emotional well-being but also their career progression. Such stressors create an ongoing need for resistance, making it harder for Black women to envision a future outside of this toxic relationship with labor and the systems that sustain it.

We must begin by rejecting the pervasive narrative that systemic oppression is inevitable. Hypernormalization, the idea that the systems in place are unchangeable, has only served to perpetuate the cycles of harm. It’s essential that we name and understand the systems of racism, patriarchy, and capitalism, and refuse to accept them as natural or unchangeable. We must confront the lie that these systems are inevitable and, instead, embrace the understanding that the fight for justice is ongoing, adaptive, and necessary. By rejecting this sense of inevitability, we can begin to forge new paths and challenge the deep-rooted inequalities that continue to shape our lives.

Reclaiming agency starts with recognizing the power we hold as individuals and communities. Collective organizing and mutual aid are lifelines for Black women in the face of systemic neglect. In our communities, we’ve always had the power to reshape our narratives, to heal, and to protect one another. We must prioritize wellness, both individual and collective, in our resistance efforts. This is not only about fighting against oppression but about nourishing ourselves and our communities so that we can continue the work of liberation. The fight for equity cannot be sustained without care for the soulwork that grounds us. We must make an internal commitment to healing, to community, and to survival.

This is our call to action: to refuse to settle for a life dictated by the old rules and the old oppressions. To reclaim the narratives of our lives, our work, and our communities. And to build, together, the futures we know we deserve.