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Reviews tagging 'Racism'
Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks
7 reviews
katanai's review
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
had to read this for a class. it was great! some parts were confusing, but overall, it was easy to read & it has given me a better perspective on critical pedagogy.
Content Warnings
Minor: Racism and Sexism
jaduhluhdabooks's review
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
Alright. I am back to write this review mostly because it was such a transformative book for me, I needed time to process the words that summed up my experience. Gloria Watkins - bell hooks, is a phenomenal writer. I mean, the invitation alone to come and sit and feel as if you are speaking to her is a gift that not many writers posses and for that invite alone, I am thankful.
As an aspiring academic, pursuing theory in the realm of race and feminist lens and contexts, this book was such a relief and an empowering composition. I also read this book pared with Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and it really hammered out the depth of Freire’s words, and offered critique for what he missed. Hooks including the narrative of Black women just released the anxiety I hold as a Black woman entering into a white male dominated field. Research and theory alone is some convulsed and the politics sway what is accepted at scholarly work and what is not.
Hooks offered inspirational perspective and really ignited the flame for transformative teaching in me again. I have always believed in the power that education has to shift and to change, but this book was a breathing testimony that personhood has place, value, and depth in a learning environment. That experience shapes our understanding of the world and can lead to broader developments of truth in framework and theory. That our breathes and bodies hold weight and signal when and how we show up in a room, change will ensue or remain stagnant.
Hooks just inspired the shit out of me for better lack of words and in going to be sitting in these words. These readings. This essay for what feels like the remainder of my very early academic career. Wishing I could sit at her kitchen table, surrounded by her yellow walls and drink tea with her, asking and learning from her.
But I have her words and for that alone, I am grateful.
As an aspiring academic, pursuing theory in the realm of race and feminist lens and contexts, this book was such a relief and an empowering composition. I also read this book pared with Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and it really hammered out the depth of Freire’s words, and offered critique for what he missed. Hooks including the narrative of Black women just released the anxiety I hold as a Black woman entering into a white male dominated field. Research and theory alone is some convulsed and the politics sway what is accepted at scholarly work and what is not.
Hooks offered inspirational perspective and really ignited the flame for transformative teaching in me again. I have always believed in the power that education has to shift and to change, but this book was a breathing testimony that personhood has place, value, and depth in a learning environment. That experience shapes our understanding of the world and can lead to broader developments of truth in framework and theory. That our breathes and bodies hold weight and signal when and how we show up in a room, change will ensue or remain stagnant.
Hooks just inspired the shit out of me for better lack of words and in going to be sitting in these words. These readings. This essay for what feels like the remainder of my very early academic career. Wishing I could sit at her kitchen table, surrounded by her yellow walls and drink tea with her, asking and learning from her.
But I have her words and for that alone, I am grateful.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism
stevia333k's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
3.75
I read this book because I figured out that inclusive pedagogy & inclusivity as a scientific/material ethic, is going to be important for praxis.
Loved this book, and it gave me context into how maoism was influencing the discourse that baby boomers were having when I was a kid.
It basically gave me relationship advice & institutional information about schools. This is incredibly valuable to me as a survivor of the school to prison pipeline. It was healing to hear someone who was a student who had these sorts of problems & later on became part of it.
I did have a problem in 2 regards which might be reasonable for a 1994 feminism, but not for today's feminism:
1: centering a chapter on political lesbian Adrienne Rich on the basis of a Rich being a token white feminist who talks about antiracism. This is the same woman who coined the disasterous "Comphet" concept which promoted gender segregated & the same woman who had a transphobic hate book dedicated to her. Even wikipedia tries to be like oh her 1 trans friend Leslie Feinberg said Rich supported zir, yet, that doesn't refute that Rich was a transphobe especially since the way "transgenderism" was used in the 1990's included cisgender GNC people, as in more about action & less about sociological identity & consent. Leslie Feinberg was a communist. i find material support to still be helpful even when it comes from bigoted community members, but we still call a bigot a bigot. I acknowledge both the gifts & the abuse. Hooks said she chose Rich's poem because she knows it by heart basically, yet, IDK why it couldn't have been someone else's work.
2: going along with the conflation of the Greek word Eros, when life force is already more legible & the Greco-Romans were xenophobic classist patriarchal enslavers. I suspect this is what "lesbian community" refers to in some cases, but it's amatonormative & acephobic at least. This had to do with dealing with inappropriate attractions, which it's like deal with that on your own time & move on! Yeah, it's good to have a life force of play & stuff, but god forbid you set boundaries!!!
Loved this book, and it gave me context into how maoism was influencing the discourse that baby boomers were having when I was a kid.
It basically gave me relationship advice & institutional information about schools. This is incredibly valuable to me as a survivor of the school to prison pipeline. It was healing to hear someone who was a student who had these sorts of problems & later on became part of it.
I did have a problem in 2 regards which might be reasonable for a 1994 feminism, but not for today's feminism:
1: centering a chapter on political lesbian Adrienne Rich on the basis of a Rich being a token white feminist who talks about antiracism. This is the same woman who coined the disasterous "Comphet" concept which promoted gender segregated & the same woman who had a transphobic hate book dedicated to her. Even wikipedia tries to be like oh her 1 trans friend Leslie Feinberg said Rich supported zir, yet, that doesn't refute that Rich was a transphobe especially since the way "transgenderism" was used in the 1990's included cisgender GNC people, as in more about action & less about sociological identity & consent. Leslie Feinberg was a communist. i find material support to still be helpful even when it comes from bigoted community members, but we still call a bigot a bigot. I acknowledge both the gifts & the abuse. Hooks said she chose Rich's poem because she knows it by heart basically, yet, IDK why it couldn't have been someone else's work.
2: going along with the conflation of the Greek word Eros, when life force is already more legible & the Greco-Romans were xenophobic classist patriarchal enslavers. I suspect this is what "lesbian community" refers to in some cases, but it's amatonormative & acephobic at least. This had to do with dealing with inappropriate attractions, which it's like deal with that on your own time & move on! Yeah, it's good to have a life force of play & stuff, but god forbid you set boundaries!!!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Classism, Sexism, Colonisation, Genocide, and Racism
Moderate: Acephobia/Arophobia and Slavery
Minor: Racial slurs
gagne's review
hopeful
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
Content Warnings
Minor: Classism, Racism, and Sexism
basicbookstagrammer's review
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism and Sexism
emily_koopmann's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism and Misogyny
bluejayreads's review
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
Even though bell hooks is one of the great and famous Black feminist theorists, her works are far from what you'd expect from "feminist theory." They're engaging, wise, relatable, and full of truth I was never quite able to put into words.
This book is about education, specifically higher education - the existing system and methods, the experience of being a professor, different and better ways of teaching and facilitating learning, and how the education system fails marginalized students (especially Black women). This topic in itself is not inherently relatable to me. I am not and have never been a professor, have never taught anyone anything in a classroom setting, and for the most part I am the kind of student who excels under the existing college education system. I did, in fact, do excellently during my undergrad.
However, seeing bell hooks put into words not only the shortcomings of the current systems but tangible ways to make it better, I realized how much I missed out on. I've always felt like I never truly learned anything in school, I simply memorized what was put in front of me - and I was a wealthy white student, the kind of student the system works best for. I can't even imagine how much more difficult it must have been for my working-class peers and peers of color.
Far from being about "just" education, though, this book also covers feminism, class, and race. It talks about how students often see plain "theory" as inaccessible and irrelevant to their lives, how to help marginalized students share their perspectives and help privileged students listen, and honoring different ways of knowing. It focuses on the experiences of marginalized students (especially Black students) in education, how the system fails them, and better ways to practice education.
The only parts I found difficult were some of the terms. I'm still not completely sure what "pedagogy" means, and bell hooks uses "theorizing" and "theory" in some contexts that confused me a little. I think this is my fault, though, because I'm pretty sure the terms were defined towards the beginning and I just took so long to read this book that I forgot.
Even though I'm not a teacher and probably won't ever be one, this book was still intensely relatable and I feel like my eyes have been opened to new things. You don't have to be a teacher or a student to get a lot out of this book.
Far from being about "just" education, though, this book also covers feminism, class, and race. It talks about how students often see plain "theory" as inaccessible and irrelevant to their lives, how to help marginalized students share their perspectives and help privileged students listen, and honoring different ways of knowing. It focuses on the experiences of marginalized students (especially Black students) in education, how the system fails them, and better ways to practice education.
The only parts I found difficult were some of the terms. I'm still not completely sure what "pedagogy" means, and bell hooks uses "theorizing" and "theory" in some contexts that confused me a little. I think this is my fault, though, because I'm pretty sure the terms were defined towards the beginning and I just took so long to read this book that I forgot.
Even though I'm not a teacher and probably won't ever be one, this book was still intensely relatable and I feel like my eyes have been opened to new things. You don't have to be a teacher or a student to get a lot out of this book.
I want to end with a few of my favorite quotes from this book - so much of it is very quotable, but these are a few that made me pause reading and save them for later.
... students, most of whom are female, come to Women's Studies classes and read what they are told is feminist theory only to feel that what they are reading has no meaning, cannot be understood, or when understood in no way connects to "lived" realities beyond the classroom.
Pages 64-65
Black women are treated as though we are a box of chocolates presented to individual white women for their eating pleasure, so they can decide for themselves and others which pieces are most tasty."
Page 80
[Discussing the value of lived personal experience in the classroom.] I share as much as possible the need for critical thinkers to engage multiple locations, to address diverse standpoints, to allow us to gather knowledge fully and inclusively. Sometimes, I tell students, it is like a recipe. I tell them to imagine we are baking bread that needs flour. And we have all the other ingredients but no flour. Suddenly the flour becomes most important even though it alone will not do.
Pages 91-92
It only took me a short while to understand that class was more than just a question of money, that it shaped values, attitudes, social relations, and the biases that informed the way knowledge would be given and received.
Page 178
Content Warnings
Minor: Racism and Sexism
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