LONG review incoming. Mostly because I haven't read anything truly academic in ages and it got my brain going!!

I really liked and learned from the three sections on Virginia Woolf. They address whiteness / empire / imperialism from several perspectives (Woolf's, her audience’s, the social context, that of those who analyze her, etc). Marcus gave me a lot to think about in Woolf’s writing and made me even more interested in her work. These chapters were dense but, in my opinion, tightly argued, well-evidenced, and interesting.

The section on Nancy Cunard, however, brought in an uncomfortably unbalanced analysis of her life and legacy. I think Cunard’s anthology - a project she funded and curated at personal risk but the majority of contents made by Black creators - is an excellent example of leveraging privilege and power. And she clearly showed her long-term commitment to the cause. But for some reason, Marcus’ main argument focuses entirely on restoring Cunard's reputation. Like, stay in your lane! It is not your place to reclaim Cunard’s legacy on behalf of Black liberation. Especially a legacy as mixed as hers- this women made some questionable and truly suspicious decisions around the art she produced. And *definitely* fetishized Black men. Was Cunard race-traitorized by white society in material and permanent ways? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean she is uncritically entitled to a place equal to that of Black authors, artists, intellectuals, etc just because Marcus feels like she deserves it and it was super unfair that she wasn’t ;(. (Marcus does lightly acknowledge that she as a WW is not the arbiter of this, but it feels more like an aside). (I also read around to try to see other commentary on Cunard and this fetishization is addressed by others. It's very clearly a problem. In one example, I appreciate Petrine Archer-Straw's more balanced approach much more.) It's like, if I can pick up on these issues from nothing more than this chapter (which isn't critically addressing them), and then later find out these are all things others have specifically critiqued, clearly there is an issue with how they're addressed in this piece. 
 
I notice at the end of the chapter that it had read much more easily than the Woolf section- far less theoretical and academic. She also concludes by posing the question and several possible explanations for Cunard’s cultural exile. It would have been much more interesting to read analyses of those questions rather than this existing work, which in retrospective feels rather unformed and aimless. Apparently restoring Cunard's reputation was Marcus' life mission so I hope the works that came after are more clear sighted.