A month before Election Day this October, Amistad Press publishes the trade paperback version of April Ryan’s 2022 Black Women Will Save the World: An Anthem. Ryan’s book celebrates Black women’s contributions to political and social change in the United States and was inspired in part by Kamala Harris, who became the first Black female vice president in 2020. Thanks to the Democratic Party’s summer plot twists, Harris is now the first woman of color to lead a major-party presidential ticket (Shirley Chisholm was the first Black woman to run for president). While this election season’s dramatic events have happened too quickly for the paperback edition to be updated, Black Women Will Save the World is nonetheless relevant to current political discourse.
The author is a veteran journalist, political analyst, and the only Black female White House correspondent covering urban issues. Trump’s 2020 loss gave Ryan cause for celebration after enduring what she describes as a diminishing and at times traumatic experience in the White House press room from 2016 to 2020. “Donald Trump literally drove me to drink,” she says.[i]
This slim volume focuses on the historical role of Black women in leadership, the costs of being Black and female, and Black women leading change for the future. For me, the most compelling sections are Ryan’s personal reflections on how the Trump years negatively affected her. She attributes the death threats she received—which included an explosive device mailed to her home—to President Trump’s direct and indirect incitements to violence against real and imagined political critics and enemies. The stress caused Ryan’s hair to fall out. Hair, she notes, she could never rock in braids as a White House journalist without fear of career-damaging backlash and getting labeled a “militant.”[ii]
While Ryan offers few personal anecdotes, the ones she shares are distressing. She recounts, for example, how Trump’s Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, regularly insinuated that the seasoned reporter was only in the room because she was a Black woman. April Ryan continues to work in media and too many tales about the challenges of being a Black female journalist without an elite pedigree (she attended an HBCU, she proudly reminds us, not an Ivy League) would be professionally devastating.[iii] Ryan observes that Black women tend to be overlooked—or scapegoated[iv] when they are too visible—as they aim to do social good while living with the “double whammy” of being Black and a woman.[v]
Ryan notes that Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump did not mean an end to the post–Obama presidency backlash against people of color in the United States: “Trumpism isn’t going anywhere.”[vi] Polling suggests a tight race and robust enthusiasm for the former reality TV show host. This year Trump adds convicted felon to his résumé while his popularity holds. Even as he is credited as the inciter-in-chief of the January 6, 2021, Capitol attacks, the Republican presidential candidate has signaled (again) he could only lose due to unfair voter interference. As Harris gains momentum in what some call a “politics of joy,” it is clear that Ryan’s 2022 observation about Trumpism’s staying power holds true in the midst of concerning events. A disturbing assassination attempt on the former president at a July rally and a second attempt in September have brought the escalating turbulence into sharper focus. Days before a man took aim at the Republican candidate on his Florida golf course, Trump debated Harris and claimed on national television that undocumented immigrants were eating household pets. I admit I laughed outright at the outrageous claim. Yet we dismiss such speech as “weird” at the peril of peace. The escalation of silliness, violent action, and the devolution of politics into cults of personality have converged such that two months before Election Day, many voters aren’t entirely sure what Harris stands for apart from not Trump. For these reasons, I wish Black Women Will Save the World had done more than provide soft-focus profiles of such figures as former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Georgia politician Stacy Abrams, and Kamala Harris. The book will no doubt introduce some readers to overlooked figures, and for that it is to be commended.
Nonetheless, we live in a Trump-informed judicial and political landscape where the Supreme Court recently determined presidents are immune from prosecution while carrying out “official acts”—a decree sufficiently vague that it should alarm anyone living in the United States regardless of their political persuasion or citizenship status. Trump’s MAGA movement did not come from nowhere. Our nation was founded on indigenous genocide, the enslavement of Black people, and the exploitation of countless marginalized populations. No one group is likely to save this country let alone the world without asking difficult questions of ourselves and our leaders. April Ryan knows how to pose those difficult questions despite not doing so here.
[i] Black Women Will Save the World: An Anthem, p. 19
[ii] p. 136
[iii] p. 53
[iv] p. 78
[v] p. 101
[vi] p. 35
NONFICTION
Black Women Will Save the World: An Anthem
By April Ryan
Amistad Press
Published October 8, 2024
