In Living a Feminist Life Sara Ahmed shows how feminist theory is generated from everyday life and the ordinary experiences of being a feminist at home and at work. Building on legacies of feminist of color scholarship in particular, Ahmed offers a poetic and personal meditation on how feminists become estranged from worlds they critique-often by naming and calling attention to problems-and how feminists learn about worlds from their efforts to transform them. Ahmed also provides her most sustained commentary on the figure of the feminist killjoy introduced in her earlier work while showing how feminists create inventive solutions-such as forming support systems-to survive the shattering experiences of facing the walls of racism and sexism. The killjoy survival kit and killjoy manifesto, with which the book concludes, supply practical tools for how to live a feminist life, thereby strengthening the ties between the inventive creation of feminist theory and living a life that sustains it.

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction. Bringing Feminist Theory Home  1
Part I. Becoming Feminist  19
1. Feminism Is Sensational  21
2. On Being Directed  43
3. Willfulness and Feminist Subjectivity  65
Part II. Diversity Work
4. Trying to Transform  93
5. Being in Question  115
6. Brick Walls  135
Part III. Living the Consequences
7. Fragile Connections  163
8. Feminist Snap  187
9. Lesbian Feminism  213
Conclusion 1. A Killjoy Survival Kit  235
Conclusion 2. A Killjoy Manifesto  251
Notes  269
References  281
Index  291

Sara Ahmed is a feminist writer, scholar, and activist. She is the author of Willful Subjects, On Being Included, The Promise of Happiness, and Queer Phenomenology, all also published by Duke University Press.