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A review by jaduhluhdabooks
Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks
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