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A review by kevin_shepherd
Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks
5.0
In 2017 I embarked on a self-study of sorts. I wanted to be better informed about feminism and feminist thought so I started with two very popular books: Looking Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women by Estelle Freedman (2002) and Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West (2016). Both authors were very knowledgeable and had a lot to say about the struggle of women for equal worth.
In 2018 my self-study started to pick up a little steam. I read authors like Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own) and Rebecca Solnit (Men Explain Things to Me) and Susan Sontag (Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors). I started to feel like I was getting a grasp on all the most important issues.
In 2019 my research took a bit of a turn. Yes I read Maureen Dowd (Are Men Necessary?) and Laurie Penny (Meat Market), but I also discovered feminist critiques about women of color: Malala Yousafzai wrote about the plight of young girls in Pakistan, Jenny Nordberg introduced me to the bacha posh of Afghanistan, and Andrea Lee Smith expounded on the violence inflicted on North America’s indigenous women. Apparently there was more at stake here than I had allowed myself to think about.
Then in 2020 my perception of feminism was turned upside down. It started with Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider.
“Audre Lorde’s voice is central to the development of contemporary feminist theory. She is at the cutting edge of consciousness.” -Nancy Bereano
Lorde’s book gave me my first inkling that Black feminists and White feminists weren’t necessarily on the same footing. Lorde inspired me to investigate further—so I read Toni Morrison and Nella Larsen and Margo Jefferson and Joan Morgan and Jill Louise Busby and Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston and Saidiya Hartman and Ijeoma Oluo and Pearl Cleage and Patricia Romney and, of course, bell hooks.
For me, hooks gave everything historical perspective and clarity. First, she writes, in the latter part of the 19th century Black women were forced to choose between the Black men’s voting rights campaign or the women’s suffrage struggle. Later, in first and second wave feminist movements, Black women were discouraged from advocating for both civil rights and feminist rights. Black men didn’t want feminists whom they viewed as betrayers of the cause and White feminist women didn’t want antiracism to detract from their message of antisexism. Thus Black women, as bell hooks describes, were perpetually between a rock (“chauvinist black men”) and a hard place (“racist white women”).
You see, I had mistakenly assumed that “feminist movements” incorporated the needs and concerns of ALL women. That was clearly not the case.
“As I encouraged Black women to become active feminists I was told that we should not become “Women’s Libbers” because racism was the oppressive force in our life, not sexism. To both groups I voiced my conviction that the struggle to end racism and the struggle to end sexism were naturally intertwined; that to make them separate was to deny a basic truth of our existence; that race and sex are both immutable facets of human identity.” -bell hooks, 1981
My feminist education is still a work in progress. Within the last three months or so I’ve read up on Claudia Jones and Lorraine Hansberry and Angela Davis. My TBR pile includes books by Elaine Brown, Ida B. Wells, Brittney Cooper, Assata Shakur, Mikki Kendal, Fannie Lou Hamer and, of course, a lot more by the phenomenal bell hooks.
In 2018 my self-study started to pick up a little steam. I read authors like Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own) and Rebecca Solnit (Men Explain Things to Me) and Susan Sontag (Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors). I started to feel like I was getting a grasp on all the most important issues.
In 2019 my research took a bit of a turn. Yes I read Maureen Dowd (Are Men Necessary?) and Laurie Penny (Meat Market), but I also discovered feminist critiques about women of color: Malala Yousafzai wrote about the plight of young girls in Pakistan, Jenny Nordberg introduced me to the bacha posh of Afghanistan, and Andrea Lee Smith expounded on the violence inflicted on North America’s indigenous women. Apparently there was more at stake here than I had allowed myself to think about.
Then in 2020 my perception of feminism was turned upside down. It started with Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider.
“Audre Lorde’s voice is central to the development of contemporary feminist theory. She is at the cutting edge of consciousness.” -Nancy Bereano
Lorde’s book gave me my first inkling that Black feminists and White feminists weren’t necessarily on the same footing. Lorde inspired me to investigate further—so I read Toni Morrison and Nella Larsen and Margo Jefferson and Joan Morgan and Jill Louise Busby and Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston and Saidiya Hartman and Ijeoma Oluo and Pearl Cleage and Patricia Romney and, of course, bell hooks.
For me, hooks gave everything historical perspective and clarity. First, she writes, in the latter part of the 19th century Black women were forced to choose between the Black men’s voting rights campaign or the women’s suffrage struggle. Later, in first and second wave feminist movements, Black women were discouraged from advocating for both civil rights and feminist rights. Black men didn’t want feminists whom they viewed as betrayers of the cause and White feminist women didn’t want antiracism to detract from their message of antisexism. Thus Black women, as bell hooks describes, were perpetually between a rock (“chauvinist black men”) and a hard place (“racist white women”).
You see, I had mistakenly assumed that “feminist movements” incorporated the needs and concerns of ALL women. That was clearly not the case.
“As I encouraged Black women to become active feminists I was told that we should not become “Women’s Libbers” because racism was the oppressive force in our life, not sexism. To both groups I voiced my conviction that the struggle to end racism and the struggle to end sexism were naturally intertwined; that to make them separate was to deny a basic truth of our existence; that race and sex are both immutable facets of human identity.” -bell hooks, 1981
My feminist education is still a work in progress. Within the last three months or so I’ve read up on Claudia Jones and Lorraine Hansberry and Angela Davis. My TBR pile includes books by Elaine Brown, Ida B. Wells, Brittney Cooper, Assata Shakur, Mikki Kendal, Fannie Lou Hamer and, of course, a lot more by the phenomenal bell hooks.