" The Future That Was brilliantly captures the sense of possibility and longing that animated this generation of activist intellectuals: that if they could guide the feminist and anticolonial energy of the moment in a more liberatory direction, their lives would be transformed. Their labors would be recognized, their sexual lives would center on their own desires, and they would have greater standing in their households and communities. Along the way, Mitra offers a master class in how to defamiliarize and analyze seemingly mundane objects to understand them in all their complexity and to show what was at stake for these Third World feminists."-- Jocelyn Olcott, author of International Women's Year: The Greatest Consciousness-Raising Event in History "Durba Mitra's superb survey of Third World feminism demonstrates how inspiring promises of liberation were stymied by the narrow methodology of policy research dictated by large foundations and multinational NGOs, creating a privileged domain of world-traveling scholars fluent in the global languages of development. But the archive of conferences, reports, books, and journals from the 1970s and 1980s survives, preserving the memory of courageous anti-authoritarian protests and resolute anti-imperialist solidarities and announcing a future that was and still can be."-- Partha Chatterjee, author of The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories "As the early hopes of decolonization foundered against the rocks of authoritarianism and neocolonialism, feminists of the Third World turned to research on the world's women as an instrument of collective liberation. In telling the story of these feminist thinkers and actors--the knowledge they created, the transnational networks they forged, and the horizon of freedom toward which they struggled--Durba Mitra has given us a formidable and riveting piece of intellectual history. This is the work of a world-class scholar firing on all cylinders.

"-- Amia Srinivasan, author of The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century "In this vibrant book, Durba Mitra gives us a new history of Third World feminism. In the 1970s and 1980s--from international conferences to local protests--women worked together not only for gender equity but also for global equality in a neocolonial, authoritarian, patriarchal world. Mitra shows us the promise of their radical vision and the limits of their legacy. Essential reading for our troubled times."-- Joanne Meyerowitz, author of A War on Global Poverty: The Lost Promise of Redistribution and the Rise of Microcredit.