Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press [founding manifesto]

New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1981. Offset. 8 ½ x 11 in. Very good. Item #10339

A 1981 flyer announcing the launch of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, founded by the Black socialist author Barbara Smith at the urging of her friend and collaborator, Audre Lorde. 

In its first years, Kitchen Table published a number of influential books focused on the experiences of women of color, including Cuentos: Stories by Latinas and Smith’s own Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. 

As described by founder Barbara Smith in a 1989 essay in Frontiers magazine, “[i]n October 1980, Audre Lorde said to me during a phone conversation, ‘We really need to do something about publishing…it was at that meeting that Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press was born. We did not arrive at a name or announce our existence until a year later, but at that initial meeting we did decide to be a publisher for all women of color.”

A critical document from the founding of the groundbreaking women of color feminist press, laying out the vision and mandate of the new editorial endeavor.

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