Released in 2011 to some attention, but not nearly enough, Cheryl Higashida’s Black Internationalist Feminism: Women Writers of the Black Left, 1945-1995 is one of those rare books you can’t mention enough.

The University of Colorado at Boulder professor transverses various historical moments, while talking about the culture and politics that influenced important writers and activists like Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, Lorraine Hansberry, Claudia Jones and many others. There are lots of really wonderful biographies available about many people featured in Black Internationalist Feminism — Claudia Jones, for example, has been the subject of at least  two recent books on her life — but Higashida offers up a solid telling of their stories.

Black Internationalist Feminism is a small book, and thus ideal for study groups and those looking for a concise discussion about marginalized voices in the internationalist struggle.