A New History of Iberian Feminisms ed. by Silvia Bermúdez and Roberta Johnson (review)

From a quick glance at the table of contents, the exceptional breadth and depth of A New History of Iberian Feminisms becomes immediately clear. This edited volume is a landmark and cornerstone to understand the place of feminist thought in the Iberian Peninsula. The introduction by Silvia Bermúdez and Roberta Johnson outlines well the objectives of the project and offers a revisionist approach to the topic. The careful curation of the chapters speaks to an enthusiastic collaborative work of research by feminist scholars.

Merging history and literary studies, the volume's milestone is its attentive consideration of both the particularities and the commonalities between the Basque provinces where the Castilian language is spoken – Catalonia, Galicia, and Portugal – from the eighteenth century to the present, particularly considering the evolution and changes of feminist thought and its social impact. That is, A New History of Iberian Feminisms evidences the need to both keep a broad, comparative view and to consider important differences between regions, cultures, and historical periods within the Iberian Peninsula. In this sense, the volume is a model for how to understand feminisms in an extensive, comparative way. As the introduction explains, the volume aims to rethink old periodizations within the history of the Iberian Peninsula, privileging a focus that follows feminist activity rather than traditional periods in Spanish and Portuguese history. The chapters take into consideration transatlantic and European feminisms, and the international dimension of the movement in central issues such as the meaning of equality and difference is masterfully put in place to understand the Iberian context.

The book is divided into six sections, which correspond to six historical periods in chronological order, each of which has been coordinated by specialists, fusing collaborative voices and individual research. Each section also entails an introduction on the political history of the time period, which serves as a historical overview, facilitating the incursion of specific themes and intersections between chapters. The chapters neatly and profoundly reflect on the importance of feminist writing, which is defined in the introduction by Bermúdez and Johnson as "writing that seeks to uncover the individual and social mechanisms that constrain women's lives and/or writing that proposes alternatives to social, political, or individual circumstances that foster inequality between men and women." The epilogue by Fina Birulés questions how advances in women's issues still collide with recurring traditional ideals and demonstrate that there is still much work to do, stating that "our freedom and the yearned-for changes in the dominant symbolic realm have not arrived."

The book offers a compelling model when reaching and clarifying the complexity and variety of feminist discourses in the Iberian Peninsula. Well balanced and exciting both for the specialist and non-specialist reader, each of the contributions maintain a refined, consistent cutting-edge level throughout the compilation. The chapters interconnect in several ways, offering both a chronological and an intellectual path of what feminism has meant in the Iberian Peninsula and touching on a large number of themes from equality, motherhood, love, marriage, family, bodies, work, and emotions within a complex literary, historical, and cultural landscape. The volume is a delight to read and is effortless to follow, an achievement given the aforementioned scope.

Stimulating and necessary, A New History of Iberian Feminisms will be a wonderful book for research and teaching. It offers readers a solid understanding of the cultural history of feminism in the Iberian Peninsula and deserves a space in the bookshelves of anyone working on issues that intersect with feminist thought or on Iberian studies.