Description: Gladys L. Mitchell-Walthour offers a comparative analysis of how Black women social welfare beneficiaries in Brazil and the United States defy systems of domination. She argues that poor Black women act as political subjects in the struggle to survive and challenge daily discrimination even in dire circumstances.
Review Quotes: This innovative, meticulously researched book sheds new light on the experiences and struggles of poor Afro-descendant women in the United States and Brazil. An example of intersectional research at its best, the analysis uncovers how the interlocking dynamics of gender, race, skin color and poverty simultaneously shape and constrain social policies. Building on a long tradition of comparative scholarship on race in both countries, The Politics of Survival offers a sophisticated and nuanced Black feminist perspective on the gendered racialization of poverty in the Americas.--Kia Lilly Caldwell, author of Health Equity in Brazil: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Policy