singingstar89's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark informative

5.0

Very hard to read emotionally but super easy to understand. Something everyone should read. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

maggieparedesauthor's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.0


Expand filter menu Content Warnings

geekywoman14's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Language is important. I've worked on dismantling my engrained white supremacy teachings for more than 20 years now. So while little of the information here was new, bell hooks pointed out something I tend to forget despite it not being new information, and that's that language matters. She mentions many times how 'man' meant 'white man', 'Negro' meant 'Black man's, and' woman' meant 'white woman' therefore excluding Black women and men and women and non-binary people of all other ethnic and racial backgrounds. What's more, these weren't accidental exclusions, but at least initially purposeful choices meant to exclude. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

liaer's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

This book was excellent. Bell hook is a wonderful writer who is an expert at the English language. It was incredibly informative and was obviously very well researched. The only reason that I didn't give it five stars is because it seemed to jump around a little for me. It followed history, examining the slave trade, then slavery, then antebellum era, and onwards. However, I felt like when she was in each of these eras she moved around a little too fast for me. I would recommend this to everyone and anyone. 

Fair warning is that there are a lot of triggering content that can be deeply upsetting. I have tried to include all of the ones I could remember in the content warnings, but please go in with the expectation that there are things that are horrific, but important to learn about. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
More...