Anti-Racism Resources

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Summary: "A classic work of feminist scholarship, Ain't I a Woman has become a must-read for all those interested in the nature of Black womanhood. Examining the impact of sexism on Black women during slavery, the devaluation of Back womanhood, Black male sexism, racism among feminists, and the Black woman's involvement with feminism, hooks attempts to move us beyond racist and sexist assumptions. The result is nothing short of groundbreaking, giving this book a critical place on every feminist scholar's bookshelf."-- Provided by publisher.

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Summary: Presenting radical new ways to think about love, the author examines the role of love in our personal and professional lives and how it can be used to end struggles between individuals, communities, and societies.The acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' "Love Song to the Nation," All About Love is a revelation about what causes a polarized society and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces. "The word 'love' is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb," writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness--not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society's failure to provide a model for learning to love. As bell hooks uses her incisive mind to explore the question "What is love?" her answers strike at both the mind and heart. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for individuals and for a nation. The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the "100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life." All About Love is a powerful, timely affirmation of just how profoundly her revelations can change hearts and minds for the better. -- Provided by publisher.

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Summary: A collection of poems centered around life in Appalachia addresses topics ranging from the marginalization of the region's people to the environmental degradation it has endured throughout history.Author, activist, feminist, teacher, and artist, bell hooks is celebrated as one of the nation's leading intellectuals. Born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, hooks drew her unique pseudonym from the name of her grandmother, an intelligent and strong-willed African American woman who inspired her to stand up against a dominating and repressive society. Her poetry, novels, memoirs, and children's books reflect her Appalachian upbringing and feature her struggles with racially integrated schools and unwelcome authority figures. One of Utne Reader's "100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life," hooks has won wide acclaim from critics and readers alike.

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Summary: What does it mean to call a place home? Who is allowed to become a member of a community? How do we create community? When can we say that we truly belong? The issues of place and belonging are the subject of this book. Moving from past to present, the author charts a journey in which she moves from place to place, from country to city and back again, only to end where she began in her native place, Kentucky. She explores a geography of the heart, focusing on issues of homeplace, of land, and land stewardship, linking the issues to global environmentalism and sustainability. She writes about family and the ties that bind. And she focuses on the experience of black farmers, past and present who celebrate local organic food production. This work offers a vision of a world where all people, wherever they call home, can live fully and well, and where everyone can belong.

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Summary: In these twelve essays, bell hooks digs ever deeper into the personal and political consequences of contemporary representations of race and ethnicity within a white supremacist culture.

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Summary: Stitching together girlhood memories with the finest threads of innocence, feminist intellectual bell hooks presents a powerfully intimate account of growing up in the South. A memoir of ideas and perceptions, Bone Black shows the unfolding of female creativity and one strong-spirited child's journey toward becoming a writer. She learns early on the roles women and men play in society, as well as the emotional vulnerability of children. She sheds new light on a society that beholds the joys of marriage for men and condemns anything more than silence for women. In this world, too, black is a woman's color--worn when earned--daughters and daddies are strangers under the same roof, and crying children are often given something to cry about. hooks finds good company in solitude, good company in books. She also discovers, in the motionless body of misunderstanding, that writing is her most vital breath.

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Summary: hooks and West share roots in the black church, and have a commitment to the life of the mind and feminism. This book takes the form of a dialog that explores diverse aspects of modern African American culture: the spiritual crisis in the black community; conservatism among the black middle class; the new black nationalism; depictions of African Americans in popular culture; and uses of black icons by modern political leaders. Of particular interest are their discussions of gender and politics; and their hope that their own intellectual engagement can serve as a model for new kinds of relationships between black men and women.

Summary: "Intimate, revealing, provocative, Communion challenges every female to courageously claim the search for love as the heroic journey we must all choose to be truly free. In Communion, hooks, answers all of our questions about the place of love in a woman's life. With her trademark commanding and lucid language, hooks explores the ways ideas about women and love were changed by feminist movement, by women's full participation in the workforce, and by the culture of self-help. Her penetrating words silence our fears about becoming women who love too much, yet they also challenge us. Her words stir us to devote as much of ourselves to love, to loving our partners, our bodies, our pasts, our parents, as we do our careers and our independence."--Jacket.

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Summary: In this engaging and provocative volume, bell hooks introduces a popular theory of feminism rooted in common sense and the wisdom of experience. Hers is a vision of a beloved community that appeals to all those committed to equality, mutual respect, and justice. hooks applies her critical analysis to the most contentious and challenging issues facing feminists today, including reproductive rights, violence, race, class, and work. With her customary insight and unsparing honesty, hooks calls for a feminism free from divisive barriers but rich with rigorous debate. In language both eye-opening and optimistic, hooks encourages us to demand alternatives to patriarchal, racist, and homophobic culture, and to imagine a different future. hooks speaks to all those in search of true liberation, asking readers to take look at feminism in a new light, to see that it touches all lives. Issuing an invitation to participate fully in feminist movement and to benefit fully from it, hooks shows that feminism--far from being an outdated concept or one limited to an intellectual elite--is indeed for everybody.

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Summary: When Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center was first published in 1984, it was welcomed and praised by feminist thinkers who wanted a new vision. Even so, individual readers frequently found the theory "unsettling" or "provocative". Today, the blueprint for feminist movement presented in the book remains as provocative and relevant as ever. Written in hook's characteristic direct style, Feminist Theory embodies the hope that feminists can find a common language to spread the word and create a mass, global feminist movement. hooks is Distinguished Professor in Residence in Appalachian Studies at Berea College, and resides in her home state of Kentucky. (Back cover).

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Summary: "Mainstream media has made a concerted effort to polarize African Americans and Latinos, emphasizing differences in culture, religion, and values. In homegrown: engaged cultural criticism, two revolutionary thinkers invite us to reexamine and challenge this politically popular binary." "As renowned thinker and writer bell hooks and MacArthur Award-winning artist Amalia Mesa-Bains confront the challenges of building cross-cultural and cross-issue coalitions, they also speak to the viability of an oppositional politic shared by African Americans and Latinos. Listen in on the conversation as they share the ways their work, families, and cultural experiences have shaped their political activism, teaching, and artistic expression. Book jacket."--Jacket.

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Twenty-three essays written from a black and feminist perspective ; they consider the bitter difficulties of racism by envisioning a world without it."One of our country's premier cultural and social critics, bell hooks has always maintained that eradicating racism and eradicating sexism must go hand in hand. But whereas many women have been recognized for their writing on gender politics, the female voice has been all but locked out of the public discourse on race. Killing Rage speaks to this imbalance. These twenty-three essays are written from a black and feminist perspective, and they tackle the bitter difficulties of racism by envisioning a world without it. They address a spectrum of topics having to do with race and racism in the United States: psychological trauma among African Americans; friendship between black women and white women; anti-Semitism and racism; and internalized racism in movies and the media. And in the title essay, hooks writes about the "killing rage"--The fierce anger of black people stung by repeated instances of everyday racism--finding in that rage a healing source of love and strength and a catalyst for positive change."--Publisher's description

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Summary: bell hooks, one of America's leading black intellectuals, is also one of our most clear-eyed and penetrating analysts of culture. Outlaw culture--the culture of the margin, of women, of the disenfranchised, of racial and other minorities--lies at the heart of bell hooks' America. Raising her powerful voice against racism and other forms of oppression in the United States, hooks unlocks the politics of representation and the meaning of that politics for and in our time. Outlaw Culture gives us hooks on many of the most important subjects of the contemporary scene, from date rape, censorship, and ideas of race and beauty, to gangsta rap, the dilemmas of feminism, and the rise of black intellectuals. Using the mix of essays and sometimes highly personal dialogues for which she is well known, hooks takes on Spike Lee and Naomi Wolf, Malcolm X and Madonna, Camille Paglia, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ice Cube, and the films The Bodyguard and The Crying Game. She speaks movingly about male violence against women, about black self-hatred, and about the ways an oppressive society creates its outlaws. In each case, hooks affirms a vision of intellectual and political engagement, foreseeing the possibility of active, critical participation in movements for radical social change. Outlaw Culture speaks clearly and strongly for the need to connect the production of knowledge with transformative democratic values."--Pub. desc.

Summary: Movies matter - that is the message of Reel to Real, bell hooks' classic collection of essays on film. They matter on a personal level, providing us with unforgettable moments, even life-changing experiences and they can confront us, too, with the most profound social issues of race, sex and class. Here bell hooks - one of America's most celebrated and thrilling cultural critics - talks back to films that have moved and provoked her, from Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction to the work of Spike Lee. Including also her conversations with master filmmakers such as Charles Burn.

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Summary: Contains chapters on Zora Neale Hurston, Emily Dickinson, Ann Petry, Lorraine Hansberry, and Toni Morrison.

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Summary: Examines the endemic problem of low self-esteem among African Americans and includes discussions on how this decreases their sense of meaning, purpose, and power and examines the barriers in society that prevent appropriate self-esteem.

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Summary: "Written from a historical and cultural perspective, Salvation takes an incisive look at the transformative power of love in the lives of African-Americans. Whether talking about the legacy of slavery, relationships, and marriage in black life, the prose and poetry of Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and Maya Angelou, the liberation movements of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, sexual pain or pleasure, hip-hop and gangsta rap culture, addiction, greed, or the failure of black leadership, hooks lets us know what love's got to do with it." "Combining the passionate politics of W.E.B. DuBois with fresh, contemporary insights, hooks brilliantly offers new visions that will heal our nation's wounds from a culture of lovelessness." "Her writings on love and its inextricable links to race, class, family, history, and popular culture raise one pivotal question: How can we create beloved American communities? Salvation is bell hooks's journey to answer this question - an offering for everyone who cares about the souls of black folk."--Jacket.

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Summary: Explores how black women's emotional growth and development is affected by daily assaults of racism and sexism.

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Summary: Writing is a healing act of power for this woman who grew up in an "old school" Southern black world where children were meant to be seen and not heard. "Talking back" was punished with silence. But in the world of woman-talk, where the everyday rules of how to live and how to act were established, hooks made language her birthright. When it comes to bigotry, there is no mincing words; bell hooks talks back. In 'Talking Back', this voice is as strong and uncompromising as ever but it is also much more personal. She writes about the meaning of feminist consciousness in daily life and about self-recovery, about overcoming white-and male-supremacy, and about intimate relationships, exploring the point where the public and private meet. (Back cover).

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Summary: Writing about struggles to end racism and white supremacy, the author reminds us that "no one is born a racist"--Everyone makes a choice. But the pervasiveness of racism in society - the "worship of whiteness"--devalues us all. To "teach community" means, for example to work against the effects of such socialization and to resist even the subtle ways in which racism is reinforced.

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Summary: Addressing questions of race, gender, and class in this work, hooks discusses the complex balance that allows us to teach, value, and learn from works written by racist and sexist authors. Highlighting the importance of reading, she insists on the primacy of free speech, a democratic education of literacy. Throughout these essays, she celebrates the transformative power of critical thinking."--Publisher description.

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SummaryIn this book, the author shares her philosophy of the classroom, offering ideas about teaching that fundamentally rethink democratic participation. She writes about a new kind of education, education as the practice of freedom. She advocates the process of teaching students to think critically and raises many concerns central to the field of critical pedagogy, linking them to feminist thought. In the process, these essays face squarely the problems of teachers who do not want to teach, of students who do not want to learn, of racism and sexism in the classroom. Teaching students to "transgress" against racial, sexual, and class boundaries in order to achieve the gift of freedom is, for the author, the teacher's most important goal. -- From back cover.

Summary: bell hooks' brilliant and controversial new book We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity goes beyond the usual analysis of the black to ask questions which other books are unwilling to address."In this powerful new book, bell hooks arrests our attention from the first page. Her title--We Real Cool; her subject--the way in which both white society and weak black leaders are failing black men and youth. Her subject is taboo: "this is a culture that does not love black males: they are not loved by white men, white women, black women, girls or boys. And especially, black men do not love themselves. How could they? How could they be expected to love, surrounded by so much envy, desire, and hate?"--Publisher's description.

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Summary: American writer bell hooks presents fifty poems on love, exploring such themes as desire, seduction, surrender, and the death of a loved one.

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SummaryDrawing on both her roots in Kentucky and her adventures with Manhattan coop boards, bell hooks provides a successful black woman's reflection, personal, straightforward, and rigorously honest on how our dilemmas of class and race are intertwined, and how we can find ways to think beyond them."--Page 4 of cover.

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Summary: "Written in response to the author's in-depth discussions with men who were inspired by her trilogy, All About Love, Salvation, and Communion, bell hook's The Will to Change addresses maleness and masculinity in new and challenging ways. With trademark candor and fierce intelligence, hooks answers the most common concerns of men, such as fear of intimacy and loss of their patriarchal place in society. She believes men can find the way to spiritual unity by getting back in touch with the emotionally open part of themselves. Only through this liberation will they lay claim to the rich and rewarding inner lives that have historically been the exclusive province of women. Men can access these feelings by giving themselves permission to be vulnerable. As they grow more comfortable and start believing that it's okay to feel, to need, and to desire, they will thrive as equal partners in their intimate relationships."--Jacket.

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Summary: Wounds of Passion is a memoir about writing, love, and sexuality. With her customary boldness and insight, bell hooks critically reflects on the impact of birth control and the women's movement on our lives. She explores the way her sexuality is influenced by her radical political consciousness. Resisting the notion that love and writing don't mix, she begins a fifteen-year relationship with a gifted poet and scholar, who inspires and encourages her. Writing the acclaimed book Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism at the age of nineteen, she begins to emerge as a brilliant social critic and public intellectual. Wounds of Passion describes a woman's struggle to devote herself to writing, sharing the difficulties, the triumphs, the pleasure, and the danger. Eloquent and powerful, this book lets us see the ways one woman writer works to find her voice while creating a love relationship based on feminist thinking. With courage and wisdom she reveals intimate details and provocative ideas, offering an illuminating vision of a writer's life.

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Summary: "What are the conditions needed for our nation to bridge cultural and racial divides? By 'writing beyond race, ' noted cultural critic bell hooks models the constructive ways scholars, activists, and readers can challenge and change systems of domination. In the spirit of previous classics like Outlaw Culture and Reel to Real, this new collection of compelling essays interrogates contemporary cultural notions of race, gender, and class. From the films Precious and Crash to recent biographies of Malcolm X and Henrietta Lacks, hooks offers provocative insights into the way race is being talked about in this 'post-racial' era"--Provided by publisher.

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Summary: One of the leading public intellectuals of her generation, bell hooks has authored over 20 books, including several classics in African-American and Women's Studies. Known mainly as a feminist thinker, hooks addresses a broad range of issues related to gender, race, teaching, and media, always advancing the understanding that these topics must be conceived of as interconnected, not isolated strands. Yearning crosses disciplinary boundaries in major debates on cultural criticism and the politics of race and gender. hooks warns us about the tendency of the discourse about difference to be removed from the struggle we must all wage against power.