Y. Davis's Violence Against Women and the Ongoing Challenge to Racism (No. 5), and Merle Woo's Our Common Enemy, Our Common Cause: Freedom Organizing in the Eighties." Obstacles In 1989 Smith wrote, "Our commitment to publishing feminist and lesbian writing has sometimes made our relations with our communities difficult and even painful, but the longer the press has existed, the easier it has become to get an intelligent and open response to this work, and we have been met with increasing interest and understanding." She added that books have been a powerful tool for challenging sexism and heterosexism. Impact and legacy Kitchen Table functioned not only as a press, but also a resource network for women of color worldwide. With this brought incredible potential but also incredible pressure to deal with tokenism and being the only publishing company run autonomously by women of color. While admitting that she was at first hesitant to combine cultural and ideological work with grassroots organizing and activism by founding Kitchen Table, in 1989 Smith acknowledged that she believed Kitchen Table had played an important role in making political change. Smith has said that if Kitchen Table and other independent feminist presses did not exist, the writings of lesbians of color would be virtually unavailable, since at the time commercial publishers did not publish women of color who openly identified as lesbian. Jaime M. Grant writes in her 1996 essay "Building Community-Based Coalitions from Academe: The Union Institute and the Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press Transition Coalition" that works published by the press have "literally transformed the conversation on racism, sexism, and homophobia in the classroom in the last decade." After Lorde's death, Barbara Smith became more politically active by later becoming a member of the city council in Albany, New York. Kitchen Table has inspired other feminist publishing companies, such as BrokenBeautiful Press, founded by Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs in 2012. In a 2018 interview with Shondaland Smith said that she believes Kitchen Table was a catalyst for "getting the work out and asserting that this work is of great value." Smith has stated, "Until this society completely transforms itself, and justice for all people prevails, there will undoubtedly be a need for Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press." See also Combahee River Collective "Barbara Smith and Kitchen Table Women of Color Press" by Terri L. Jewell, Hot Wire: The Journal of Women's