Anna Elena Torres

“Torres thoughtfully examines the engagement of Yiddish writers with anarchist movements from the nineteenth century through the post–World War II period. This provocative book introduces a new dimension to Yiddish literary studies.”

—Amelia Glaser, author of Songs in Dark Times

“Torres mines a rich universe of Yiddish poetry for her concept of ‘anarchist diasporism,’ a radical politics of migration, translation, and exile. Her historically-informed politics of prefiguration and mutual aid offers needed resources to today’s anti-fascist struggles.”

—Kathy E. Ferguson, author of Letterpress Revolution: The Politics of Anarchist Print Culture

“This breathtaking study of Yiddish anarchism is at once instructive, sobering, and stirring. Using diasporism to explore the movement’s rich literature and neglected history, Torres forcefully defends anarchism as a strategy of action and ideal of comradeship.”

—Ruth Kinna, author of The Government of No One

“In this groundbreaking and politically urgent work of archival recovery, Torres highlights the ways Yiddish literature offers strategies to negotiate the surveillance, detention, censorship, and deportation underlying an ‘anarchist diasporism.’”

—Juno Jill Richards, author of The Fury Archives

“This volume vividly recaptures the lost world of Jewish anarchism, tracing its political imaginaries as well as the social structures and practices that it built. Spanning multiple continents and centuries, it offers a new way of approaching the Jewish radical experience in the past–and potentially rethinking its possibilities in the present.”

– Faith C. Hillis, author of Utopia’s Discontents: Russian Émigrés and the Quest for Freedom, 1830s–1930s

“This is the first book of its kind in English and each contribution is original and important. Not only does the collection add to the quantity of studies, it steers research on the subject in new directions. Traditionally, anarchism’s connections to religious thought have been ignored, the presumption being they have nothing to do with one another. These authors show otherwise.”

– Tony Michels, author of Jewish Radicals: A Documentary History

“This book is an intellectual buffet, a smorgasbord of different dishes. This review has only hinted at the pleasures awaiting the reader. Feast and enjoy!”

– The Independent Scholar

“This wide-ranging collection of extraordinary writings – drawn from a decade of the important work of make/shift magazine to document feminist cultures and organizing strategies – offers a snapshot of ten years of incisive political and cultural analysis centering the work of women of color artists and activists. In the contemporary political moment, when there is such urgency to act, these writers insist that we consistently critique our analyses and approaches, and remind us how vitally important explicitly intersectional, multi-issue organizing strategies are to the success of our movements. Feminisms in Motion provides both a historical record of significant antiracist feminist interventions and a roadmap for moving us in the direction of freedom and justice.”

– Angela Y. Davis

“Women of color have been at the center and forefront of some of the most urgent political struggles for freedom in the United States. They have pioneered, through practice and theory, models of collective, intersectional feminism that have demanded more radical and more just ways of living, being, and acting. Feminisms in Motion is a welcome and urgent anthology that foregrounds the exciting and compelling work of these activists and writers.”

—Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer

By foregrounding the experience of Jews in the modern Middle East and North Africa, this exciting volume recharts the historiography of radical Jewish politics on a global scale, presented in all of its drama, depth, and diversity.” — Ilan Benattar

― Robert F. & Patricia G. Ross Weis Visiting Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies & History, Franklin

“Placing the Middle East and North Africa at its center, this important volume challenges conventional geographies and the conception of Jewish radicalism itself. It shows how colonialism, and in turn anticolonial movements, drove Jews to embrace radical politics as they navigated the rise of the nation state and their future in it.” — Elizabeth E. Imber

― author of Uncertain Empire: Jews, Nationalism, and the Fate of British Imperialism