Levitt, Jeremy I. (ed.), Black Women and International Law: Review

In a world swirling with conflicting narratives about people of colour, the need for the legal and academic context contained in this book is welcome and essential. The expurgation of black women from history and literature is a worrying trend that receives insufficient global attention. On the other hand, academic and non-academic literature highlighting the concept of intersectionality are gradually becoming mainstream topics in the US. Furthermore, it is often suggested that black women should tell their own stories. This is because the validity of particular narratives about lived experience is doubted when the subjects of these narratives do not author the narratives. However, as this book alludes to, quite frequently, opportunities for black women anywhere and everywhere in the world are relatively sparse; black women therefore are regularly the voiceless and invisible subjects of international law. We then face a conundrum of giving voice to the voiceless by speaking for them, and bringing forth the invisible faces of black women by drawing from external perspectives. These are some of the challenges this book attempts to overcome.