Books like Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black

This is the earliest of bell hooks' books that I've read, and the first time I've read about her family and educational background in so much detail. At the start of the book, she discusses how talking about these topics has been difficult for her because they are not permissible topics in her milieu, for instance, black people and other people of colour have protected themselves from aspects of white supremacy by keeping quiet (also, she talks about ridiculing the thoughtless, annoying, self-obsessed way white people often talk about themselves, a ridicule that can discourage people from talking about any personal stuff at all). This is one of the many ways she addresses in this book the modes of silencing that operate against black women and other marginalised people. The title reflects her determination to refuse to be silenced, to speak against regulations and expectations. She quotes from Audre Lorde's poem 'Litany for Survival':and when we speak we are afraidour words will not be heardnor welcomedbut when we are silentwe are still afraidSo it is better to speakrememberingwe were never meant to surviveShe also explains her choice of pseudonym – bell hooks was a female relative remembered as someone who spoke boldly, out of turn. A longer essay towards the end of the book elaborates on this and how useful she found the pseudonym to take to focus away from herself and to what she had to say. This relates to her critique of the feminist saw 'the personal is political', which she appreciates but flags as dangerous, arguing that while politics may begin with the personal, if we stop there, if we don't move beyond the personal into community and solidarity, then the world doesn't change.Another key theme here is race, sex and class in the education system, particularly in graduate school. Mostly, she is discussing structural oppression, but discrimination in her own experience was often quite overt; she shares that at least one of her teachers told her openly that he would fail her regardless of the quality of her work, and that she and other students were constantly discouraged from focussing on the work of black women. She draws on her experience as a teacher to think through issues that are still highly relevant, such as whether a white person should write about black people or other people of colour. On this question, she suggests that what is problematic is the white person being seen as an authority on the topic, something that is likely to happen regardless of their intentions. Writing about a group of people you don't belong to, who are more marginalised than you, could be a very misguided attempt to be an ally:In a conversation with a Chicano historian about white scholars writing about Chicano history, he mentioned a conference where a famous white male spoke of the necessity of white people writing on Chicanos so as to give the subject scholarly legitimacy, to ensure that such work would receive proper attention, consideration, and scholarly respectStill, this nuanced essay isn't condemnatory of all such writing, and she critiques Joanna Russ' book How to Suppress Women's Writing for the way Russ humbly 'stresses the importance of literature by women of color by saying that as a white woman scholar she was not in a position to speak about these works. Towards the end of the book, she listed many quotes from women of color ostensibly encouraging readers to read these writers, to see their words as important. Yet this gesture disturbed me because it also implied that women of color represent this group whose experiences and whose writing is so removed from that of white women that they cannot address such work critically and analytically. This assumption may very well reinforce racism. It helps take the burden of accountability away from white women and places it solely onto women of color.'in essays such as 'towards a revolutionary feminist pedagogy' (the titles generally make you want to jump up and shout YEAH) she critiques traditional college teaching practices which place the teacher in an authoritarian role. She is especially disappointed by white male Marxist professors who use traditional styles, pointing to the hypocrisy of preaching liberatory practice while failing to embody it. Hooks often quotes Paulo Freire and describes aspects of her own teaching practice wherein she attempted to move towards a liberatory pedagogy, making it necessary for each student to contribute. She stresses that this was hard for the students and that they often reacted negatively, and this made it hard for her too; she had to give up her need to be liked by students. However, many students would come to her after courses had finished and share that they had gained so much, and failed to realise it at the time, so the rewards come, just late.Yet another issue raised about Women's Studies courses is the tendency to see white women's work as theoretical while black women's writing could contribute only lived experience; on many courses the only work assigned by black women was The Color Purple, and this would often be the only non-theoretical work. It is a struggle for black women gain recognition as intellectuals or feminist philosophers rather than as experts only on black women's experience.The Color Purple gets a happier mention in discussions of heterosexism = ) I always find hooks' work on pop culture memorable and incisive, and that includes her strong critique of Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It here.I really enjoyed hooks' discussions of class and education that wove in a lot of autobiographical material. As always, she uses a personal approach to bring such a fine clarity to her work and the effort to make it accessible and avoid 'linguistically convoluted' writing is evident.Discussions of violence in intimate relationships and the shortcomings and white supremacy of much white women's feminist practice begin here and are addressed in more depth in her later work, but the essay on feminism and militarism stuck out to me; she strongly rejects the idea that women are inherently less violent than men and the image of women as natural nurturing pacifists that some anti-militarist activists were using. Non-violence is not a biological impulse!It was also moving to read some of hooks' thoughts on black women's writing as well as other forms of 'coming to voice'. She speaks about her own great difficulty writing her first book Ain't I a Woman while working full time and then how hard it was to get it published. If she hadn't been incredibly determined, this book might never have been written. I shudder to imagine a world without bell hooks...Her wish for feminism to resume existence beyond its problematic location in the academy has at least come true – whether feminists are meeting in small groups to share their thoughts I don't know, but the internet has done more than most folks' wildest dreams in the '80s to create community & connection.