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Sara Ahmed

Goodreads Author

Website

https://www.saranahmed.com/

Genre

Nonfiction, Gay and Lesbian, Philosophy

Member Since

November 2025

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Sara Ahmed is an independent queer feminist scholar of colour. Her work is concerned with how power is experienced and challenged in everyday life and institutional cultures. Her most recent book is No is Not a Lonely Utterance: The Art and Activism of Complaining which came out with Allen Lane in September 2025, and which is a companion text to The Feminist Killjoy Handbook which was published by Allen Lane in 2023. Previous books include Complaint! (2021), What's The Use? On the Uses of Use (2019), Living a Feminist Life (2017), Willful Subjects (2014), On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (2012), The Promise of Happiness (2010) and Queer Phenomenology: Orientations Objects, Others all published by Duke University ...more

7 posts
Sara Ahmed's Blog

A Killjoy’s Answer

A killjoy’s answer is an answer to these questions: why another book on complaint? Why another trade book? Why another handbook?

A Complainer’s Handbook is currently in the process of being re-titled but that is not an answer to these questions.

The answer is in an off-repeated utterance:

“This does not just happen in universities, you know.”

I did know.

I do know.

Complaints are missing data. When you

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Sara Ahmed’s books

Average rating: 4.3 · 14,838 ratings · 1,632 reviews · 57 distinct works • Similar authors

	Living a Feminist Life 4.30 avg rating — 3,338 ratings — published 2017 — 28 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Feminist Killjoy Handbook: The Radical Potential of Getting in the Way 3.90 avg rating — 2,138 ratings — published 2023 — 20 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others 4.31 avg rating — 1,752 ratings — published 2006 — 20 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Cultural Politics of Emotion 4.34 avg rating — 1,338 ratings — published 2004 — 26 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Promise of Happiness 4.27 avg rating — 1,273 ratings — published 2010 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life 4.31 avg rating — 608 ratings — published 2012 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Complaint! 4.24 avg rating — 556 ratings — published 2021 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Willful Subjects 4.29 avg rating — 188 ratings — published 2014 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Strange Encounters 4.31 avg rating — 157 ratings — published 2000 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	What's the Use?: On the Uses of Use 4.29 avg rating — 134 ratings — published 2019 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Sara’s Recent Updates

Sara Ahmed is now following Alok Vaid-Menon Author of Beyond the Gender Binary
Nov 24, 2025 10:44PM · like

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Quotes by Sara Ahmed (?)

“Solidarity does not assume that our struggles are the same struggles, or that our pain is the same pain, or that our hope is for the same future. Solidarity involves commitment, and work, as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings, or the same lives, or the same bodies, we do live on common ground.”
― Sara Ahmed

60 likes

“Let’s take this figure of the feminist killjoy seriously. Does the feminist kill other people’s joy by pointing out moments of sexism? Or does she expose the bad feelings that get hidden, displaced, or negated under public signs of joy? Does bad feeling enter the room when somebody expresses anger about things, or could anger be the moment when the bad feelings that circulate through objects get brought to the surface in a certain way?”
― Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness

tags: feminism

53 likes

“When you expose a problem you pose a problem. It might then be assumed that the problem would go away if you would just stop talking about or if you went away.”
― Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life

tags: feminism

38 likes

See all Sara Ahmed's quotes »

Polls

What should be our May group read (non-fiction)?

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly

18 votes 17.5%

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

13 votes 12.6%

The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf

11 votes 10.7%

The Day Nina Simone Stopped Singing by Darina Al-Joundi

8 votes 7.8%

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

7 votes 6.8%

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West

6 votes 5.8%

Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape by Jenna Miscavige Hill

6 votes 5.8%

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

5 votes 4.9%

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

5 votes 4.9%

Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed

4 votes 3.9%

The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times by Pema Chödrön

4 votes 3.9%

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang

3 votes 2.9%

Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit

2 votes 1.9%

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

2 votes 1.9%

War's Unwomanly Face by Svetlana Alexievich

2 votes 1.9%

No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin

2 votes 1.9%

They Left Us Everything: A Memoir by Plum Johnson

2 votes 1.9%

Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape by Peggy Orenstein

2 votes 1.9%

Nora: The Real Life of Molly Bloom by Brenda Maddox

1 vote 1.0%

A Different Beautiful: Discovering and Celebrating Beauty in Places You Never Expected by Courtney Westlake

0 votes 0.0%

103 total votes

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