entitled to engage?

From Chandra Talpade Mohanty's Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Praciticing Solidarity:

"I have argued for a politics of engagement rather than a politics of transcendence, for the present and the future. I know - in my own nonsynchronous temporality - that the antiglobalization movements of the past five years will gain momentum, that the resistance to and victory over the efforts of the US government and multinational mining conglomerates to relocate the Navajo and Hopi reservations from Big Mountain, Arizona, will be written into elementary school textbooks, and the Palestinian homeland will no longer be referred to as the "Middle East question" - it will be a reality in the next few years. But that is my preferred history: what I hope and struggle for, I garner as my knowledge, create it as the place from where I seek to know. After all, it is the way in which I understand, define, and engage in feminist, anti-imperialist, and antiracist collectives and movements that anchors my belief in the future and in the efficacy of struggles for social change."

- pg. 122

I particularly like that passage, perhaps because I enjoy seeing the world through Mohanty's eyes, and I feel empowered when I hope alongside her.

Mohanty, a Third World feminist, shuns the idea of a universal sisterhood, and instead calls for an engagement via common struggle. But I wonder at what point we can consider struggle "common." Is it possible for me to engage with a struggle that was never mine? Can I make it mine? And if not, in what ways can I support those for whom that particular struggle is real? Can I support them? Should I try?

Must Third World feminism be practiced by a Third World feminist?
As an American feminist of color, Mohanty would say that I am a Third World feminist, but clearly, being a Japanese American daughter of a professor in Hawaii is not the same as being an African American daughter of an unemployed single mother in New Orleans. (I apologize for any perceived snobbery or stereotyping.)

My question is, can I honestly engage in this kind of work???? If we share the same hopes, perhaps we can find similar struggles from which to work from, taking an approach more complex than simply from the universal to the particular, or vice-versa. But perhaps I am just trying to justify my desire to engage in this kind of work.