Pushing Back: Interview with Ariella Rotramel

Interviewed by Hongdeng Gao

Today on the blog, Gotham editor, Hongdeng Gao interviews Ariella Rotramel, author of Pushing Back: Women of Color–Led Grassroots Activism in New York City.

Pushing Back: Women of Color–Led Grassroots Activism in New York City
By Ariella Rotramel
University of Georgia Press, 2020
164 pages

Pushing Back: Women of Color–Led Grassroots Activism in New York City (U Georgia Press, 2020) explores women of color’s grassroots leadership in organizations that are not singularly identified with feminism. Centered in New York City, Pushing Back brings an intersectional perspective to communities of color as it addresses injustices tied to domestic work, housing, and environmental policies and practices. Ariella Rotramel shows how activists respond to injustice and marginalization, documenting the ways people of color and the working class in the United States recognize identity as key to the roots of and solutions to injustices such as environmental racism and gentrification.

Hongdeng Gao is a PhD candidate at the Department of History at Columbia University and an editor for Gotham.