Reviews

There’s a lot of potent stuff here. I’ve been reading my way through not just contemporary activists like Ibram Kendi and Ijeoma Oluo but also ones from earlier movements like James Baldwin and Angela Davis. But this is my first foray into the works of bell hooks. Thanks to the place I was in, mentally, I only gave this 4 stars. I felt she over-used quotations. Some of them went on for half a page.

I’d come across the name before and thanks to the blinders of The Grammar Despot I had proudly worn I judged and dismissed her based on her refusal to use capital letters in her name. I’m glad my linguistic reading habits of late have helped me see the error of my grammatical tyranny. This book is so hard to read. And to quote Tom Hanks’ character in A League of their Own ”The hard is what makes it great.”

Still, it was written the year I was born. This book, not A League of their Own. So I wasn’t sure how much had changed in the gender equality, and the racial equality movements since 1981. Were the things Ms. hooks was saying still relevant today? Then, near the end of the book, came this:

“Teaching women hot to defend themselves against male rapists is not the same as working to change society so that men will not rape.” (191)

That sounds exactly like the #MeToo movement. So, yeah. Still relevant today. Shame on us White men.