Clenched Fists, Burning Crosses

Inspired by the horrors of the Greensboro Massacre, Cris South penned Clenched Fists, Burning Crosses as part of the noted Feminary collective. The book, a thinly fictionalized representation of her own life and activism, centers on Jessie, a working-class printer whose antiracist and anti-Klan activism come to the attention of Klan members, with harrowing results. Jessie's story mirrors that of the author's and offers a vision of what multiple intersectional coalitions of oppressed people look like: lesbian feminists, Black activists, and, perhaps most memorably, a woman who confronts her abuser swinging an axe, Lizzie Borden style, to reclaim her agency. Although Jessie 's suffering -and the suffering of the women around her- is stark in its realism, the book ends with a celebration of both resistance and love. This is the novel's distinctive contribution: it refuses abjection and claims the healing power of political resistance and coalition.