Spivak is perhaps best known for her overtly political use of contemporary cultural and critical theories to challenge the legacy of colonialism on the way we read and think about literature and culture. Always cutting-edge, always controversial, Spivak champions the voices and texts of those marginalized by western culture and takes on many of the dominant ideas of the contemporary era. Yet her hugely important theoretical work is often hard to approach for the first time. This guide offers a stepping stone to such crucial primary texts as In Other Worlds and A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason. It examines her work through the issues of style, deconstruction, the subaltern, third world women and western feminism, materialism and value, post-colonialism and the literary text.