The book is absorbing but uneven … This book also would have benefited from a more substantial introduction. To be sure, Bell explains her motivation for the book, writing movingly about her mom, and about issues of gender and leadership, but she does not fully develop those themes or knit the stories of the nine women into an overarching narrative about gender relations in the movement … Bell doesn’t explain why she chose these nine women. She also doesn’t explain their order in the book … There is a memoir or autobiography in each of these women. But they are perhaps too modest to lift themselves up, which is why Bell’s book is so valuable. In many ways, I wanted more from this book. At the same time, this is just enough to encourage each of us to celebrate the women of the civil rights movement and to learn more about them.
Lighting the Fires of Freedom: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement
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