womanist theology

God of the Oppressed remains a landmark in the development of Black Theology—the first effort to present a systematic theology drawing fully on the resources of African-American religion and culture. Responding to the criticism that his previous books drew too heavily on Euro-American definitions of theology, James Cone went back to his experience of the black church in Bearden, Arkansas, the tradition of the Spirituals and black folklore, and the black history of struggle and survival, to construct a new approach to the gospel. In his reflections on God, Jesus, suffering, and liberation, Cone relates the gospel message to the experience of the black community. But a wider theme of the book is the role that social and historical context plays in framing the questions we address to God, as well as the mode of the answers provided. Revised, including a new introduction by Cone, God of the Oppressed remains invaluable for scholars, students, clergy, and everyone concerned with vital, contemporary God-Talk.

Revised and Expanded EditionWait—what's wrong with rights? It is usually assumed that trans and gender nonconforming people should follow the civil rights and "equality" strategies of lesbian and gay rights organizations by agitating for legal reforms that would ostensibly guarantee nondiscrimination and equal protection under the law. This approach assumes that the best way to address the poverty and criminalization that plague trans populations is to gain legal recognition and inclusion in the state's institutions. But is this strategy effective? In Normal Life Dean Spade presents revelatory critiques of the legal equality framework for social change, and points to examples of transformative grassroots trans activism that is raising demands that go beyond traditional civil rights reforms. Spade explodes assumptions about what legal rights can do for marginalized populations, and describes transformative resistance processes and formations that address the root causes of harm and violence. In the new afterword to this revised and expanded edition, Spade notes the rapid mainstreaming of trans politics and finds that his predictions that gaining legal recognition will fail to benefit trans populations are coming to fruition. Spade examines recent efforts by the Obama administration and trans equality advocates to "pinkwash" state violence by articulating the US military and prison systems as sites for trans inclusion reforms. In the context of recent increased mainstream visibility of trans people and trans politics, Spade continues to advocate for the dismantling of systems of state violence that shorten the lives of trans people. Now more than ever, Normal Life is an urgent call for justice and trans liberation, and the radical transformations it will require.

It has been decades since women of color first turned feminism upside down, exposing the ‘70s feminist movement as exclusive, white, and unaware of the concerns and issues of women of color from around the globe. Now a new generation of brilliant, outspoken women of color is speaking to the concerns of a new feminism, and their place in it. Daisy Hernandez of Ms. magazine and poet Bushra Rehman have collected a diverse, lively group of emerging writers who speak to their experience—to the strength and rigidity of community and religion, to borders and divisions, both internal and external—and address issues that take feminism into the twenty-first century. One writer describes herself as a “mixed brown girl, Sri-Lankan and New England mill-town white trash,” and clearly delineates the organizing differences between whites and women of color: “We do not kick ass the way the white girls do, in meetings of NOW or riot grrl. For us, it’s all about family.” A Korean-American woman struggles to create her own identity in a traditional community: “Yam-ja-neh means nice, sweet, compliant. I’ve heard it used many times by my parents’ friends who don’t know shit about me.” An Arab-American feminist deconstructs the “quaint vision” of Middle-Eastern women with which most Americans feel comfortable. This impressive array of first-person accounts adds a much-needed fresh dimension to the ongoing dialogue between race and gender, and gives voice to the women who are creating and shaping the feminism of the future.

The Racial Contract puts classic Western social contract theory, deadpan, to extraordinary radical use. With a sweeping look at the European expansionism and racism of the last five hundred years, Charles W. Mills demonstrates how this peculiar and unacknowledged "contract" has shaped a system of global European domination: how it brings into existence "whites" and "non-whites," full persons and sub-persons, how it influences white moral theory and moral psychology; and how this system is imposed on non-whites through ideological conditioning and violence. The Racial Contract argues that the society we live in is a continuing white supremacist state. Holding up a mirror to mainstream philosophy, this provocative book explains the evolving outline of the racial contract from the time of the New World conquest and subsequent colonialism to the written slavery contract, to the "separate but equal" system of segregation in the United States. According to Mills, the contract has provided the theoretical architecture justifying an entire history of European atrocity against non-whites, from David Hume's and Immanuel Kant's claims that blacks had inferior cognitive power, to the Holocaust, to the kind of imperialism in Asia that was demonstrated by the Vietnam War. Mills suggests that the ghettoization of philosophical work on race is no accident. This work challenges the assumption that mainstream theory is itself raceless. Just as feminist theory has revealed orthodox political philosophy's invisible white male bias, Mills's explication of the racial contract exposes its racial underpinnings.

Revelations about U.S policies and practices of torture and abuse have captured headlines ever since the breaking of the Abu Ghraib prison story in April 2004. Since then, a debate has raged regarding what is and what is not acceptable behavior for the world’s leading democracy. It is within this context that Angela Davis, one of America’s most remarkable political figures, gave a series of interviews to discuss resistance and law, institutional sexual coercion, politics and prison. Davis talks about her own incarceration, as well as her experiences as "enemy of the state," and about having been put on the FBI’s "most wanted" list. She talks about the crucial role that international activism played in her case and the case of many other political prisoners.Throughout these interviews, Davis returns to her critique of a democracy that has been compromised by its racist origins and institutions. Discussing the most recent disclosures about the disavowed "chain of command," and the formal reports by the Red Cross and Human Rights Watch denouncing U.S. violation of human rights and the laws of war in Guantánamo, Afghanistan and Iraq, Davis focuses on the underpinnings of prison regimes in the United States.

When women get together and talk about men, the news is almost always bad news," writes bell hooks. "If the topic gets specific and the focus is on black men, the news is even worse."In this powerful new book, bell hooks arrests our attention from the first page. Her title--We Real Cool; her subject--the way in which both white society and weak black leaders are failing black men and youth. Her subject is taboo: "this is a culture that does not love black males: " "they are not loved by white men, white women, black women, girls or boys. And especially, black men do not love themselves. How could they? How could they be expected to love, surrounded by so much envy, desire, and hate?

In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In \ Black Feminist Thought, \ Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals as well as those African-American women outside academe. She provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. The result is a superbly crafted book that provides the first synthetic overview of Black feminist thought.

I have a complicated history with feminism that is probably not unique for a post-civil rights/black power movement black woman. But, all issues with the word feminism aside, I recognized myself too much in these essays to deny that whether I like it or not, I am constantly inhabiting multiple worlds. If the black man's plight is double-consciousness the black woman's must be a quad-consciousness. Michele Wallace's essay could well be my life save the 15 pounds she actually lost. She ends her essay saying there is little hope for a black feminist movement and maybe some minimal hope for a multicultural feminist movement. The sociologist (and black woman) in me tends to agree. This appears to be an individual fight -- I'd argue primarily due to mate competition but again, I'm a sociologist. It's one of those perma-books: on my shelf, moves with me, re-read from time to time.

One of our country's premier cultural and social critics, bell hooks has always maintained that eradicating racism and eradicating sexism must go hand in hand. But whereas many women have been recognized for their writing on gender politics, the female voice has been all but locked out of the public discourse on race.Killing Rage speaks to this imbalance. These twenty-three essays are written from a black and feminist perspective, and they tackle the bitter difficulties of racism by envisioning a world without it. They address a spectrum of topics having to do with race and racism in the United States: psychological trauma among African Americans; friendship between black women and white women; anti-Semitism and racism; and internalized racism in movies and the media. And in the title essay, hooks writes about the "killing rage"—the fierce anger of black people stung by repeated instances of everyday racism—finding in that rage a healing source of love and strength and a catalyst for positive change.bell hooks is Distinguished Professor of English at City College of New York. She is the author of the memoir Bone Black as well as eleven other books. She lives in New York City.

Acclaimed visionary and intellectual bell hooks began her exploration of the meaning of love in American culture with the bestselling All About Love: New Visions. Here she continues her love song to the nation in the groundbreaking and soul-stirring Salvation: Black People and Love.Whether talking about the legacy of slavery, relationships and marriage in Black life, the prose and poetry of our most revered artists and leaders, the liberation movements of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, or hip-hop and gangsta rap culture, hooks lets us know what love's got to do with it.Salvation is work that helps us heal -- and shows us how to create beloved American communities.

#BingoLitNegra #LeiaNegros #MulheresParaLerUma leitura extremamente enriquecedora. Angela Davis deixa claro que se nós quisermos uma mudança no mundo é necessário que unamos forças para lutar contra o machismo, sexismo, racismo, lgbtfobia, contra as guerras e tudo aquilo que oprime (capitalismo!!!) negros, mulheres e pessoas racializadas e pobres. Apesar de ser um livro datado e escrito nos EUA a essência dele ainda se faz muito atual e conversa não só com a realidade brasileira, mas também com todos os negros espalhados pelo mundo. Os textos de Davis mostram que avançamos em algumas coisas, mas que em outras, indiscutivelmente, estamos retrocedendo em comparação com a década de 80.São textos claros que mostram que a nossa luta contra a opressão precisa continuar urgentemente e sem medo. Um texto que curti bastante foi sobre a visita da Davis ao Egito para conversar com as egípcias. Fica a recomendação.

Expanding on the call to action in Michelle Alexander's acclaimed best-seller, The New Jim Crow, this accessible organizing guide puts tools in your hands to help you and your group understand how to make meaningful, effective change. Learn about your role in movement-building and how to pick and build campaigns that contribute towards a bigger mass movement against the largest penal system in the world. This important new resource offers examples from this and other movements, time-tested organizing techniques, and vision to inspire, challenge, and motivate.

Patricia Williams is a lawyer and a professor of commercial law, the great-great-granddaughter of a slave and a white southern lawyer. The Alchemy of Race and Rights is an eloquent autobiographical essay in which the author reflects on the intersection of race, gender, and class. Using the tools of critical literary and legal theory, she sets out her views of contemporary popular culture and current events, from Howard Beach to homelessness, from Tawana Brawley to the law-school classroom, from civil rights to Oprah Winfrey, from Bernhard Goetz to Mary Beth Whitehead. She also traces the workings of "ordinary racism"--everyday occurrences, casual, unintended, banal perhaps, but mortifying. Taking up the metaphor of alchemy, Williams casts the law as a mythological text in which the powers of commerce and the Constitution, wealth and poverty, sanity and insanity, wage war across complex and overlapping boundaries of discourse. In deliberately transgressing such boundaries, she pursues a path toward racial justice that is, ultimately, transformative.Williams gets to the roots of racism not by finger-pointing but by much gentler methods. Her book is full of anecdote and witness, vivid characters known and observed, trenchant analysis of the law's shortcomings. Only by such an inquiry and such patient phenomenology can we understand racism. The book is deeply moving and not so, finally, just because racism is wrong--we all know that. What we don't know is how to unthink the process that allows racism to persist. This Williams enables us to see. The result is a testament of considerable beauty, a triumph of moral tactfulness. The result, as the title suggests, is magic.

This groundbreaking collection reflects an uncompromised definition of feminism by women of color. Through personal essays, criticism, interviews, testimonials, poetry, and visual art, the collection explores, as coeditor Cherríe Moraga writes, “the complex confluence of identities—race, class, gender, and sexuality—systemic to women of color oppression and liberation.”

An interesting transition between the raw passion of Notes of a Native Son and the prophetic rhetoric of The Fire Next Time, Nobody Knows My Name is as eloquent as either work. The essays collected here range from an analysis of the ties between racial and national identity in America through a memoir of the author's relationship with Richard Wright to a critique of Norman Mailer's work. Regardless of what his subject is, though, Baldwin is uniformly brilliant in this collection. Favorite essays included "Princes and Powers," "A Fly in the Buttermilk," "Nobody Knows My Name," and "Alas, Poor Richard."

bell hooks shares her upbringing and personal history with us in this book, and for that reason it is worth savoring. She has a very conversational style in this book; she is not writing a polemic. But she is teaching. This book reminds us that America does indeed have a class hierarchy, and indicates how that plays out for citizens. hooks reminds us that in a culture where money is the measure of value, it is believed that everything and everybody can be bought. But money is not the standard where other values are more important: “Solidarity with the poor is the only path that can lead out nation back to a vision of community that can effectively challenge and eliminate violence and exploitation.” Acquiring wealth or items of value make us fearful that someone will take those things away from us. hooks herself had such an experience, having bought a fancy car she found herself being less generous. A material object with which she identified altered her relationship to others. She caught this recognizable mindset exactly: human beings do this. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t admire or have lovely things. We just have to acknowledge they change us and our relationship with others, and find a way to compensate for this. Money or beautiful things is not the point, not the point of our existence. We have to look harder, deeper for that. This book was published in 2000, shortly after hooks’ prolific period studying, writing, speaking in the 1990s. The push for more—more money, more power—has always been with us but hadn’t infected the vast middle class, perhaps because it was unimaginable, until this period when unheard-of wealth was within reach for many in the middle class. hooks is just reminding us not to lose our sensibility to the false god, gold.Chapter Five, called “The Politics of Greed,” is just as relevant now as it was when written twenty years or so ago, perhaps more so. That’s the thing with bell hooks: she seems to have sprung full-grown from the head of Athena or whomever. She is grounded in a way we can dream of, finding her way to answers some of us will only discover in old age, if at all. She talks about addiction in a way that hurts, it seems so familiar to many now. “Those who suffer the weight of this greed-based predatory capitalism are the addicted. Robbed of the capacity to function as citizens of any community (unable to work, to commune with others, even to eat), they become the dehumanized victims of an ongoing protracted genocide. Unlike the drugs used in the past, like marijuana and heroin, drugs like cocaine and crack/cocaine disturbed the mental health of the addicted and created in them cravings so great that no moral or ethical logic could intervene to stop immoral behavior.” We recognize this language today, though the drug choice has changed to opioids.In her chapter entitled “Being Rich,” hooks explains that the poor and working class have been taught by mass media to think like and aspire to the values and attitudes of the rich ruling classes, ideologically joining with the rich to protect their class interests. We are all taught to believe that the wealthy have earned their right to rule because they are rich, without examination into the sources of that wealth and the exploitation it may represent, and we therefore often abandon any political commitment to economic justice.In the old days of an emerging Christian ethic, the disciples were puzzled to learn from Jesus that the rich must work harder for grace because they will be tempted to hoard their wealth and exploit others to increase their wealth. “Nowadays much new age spirituality attempts to undermine traditional biblical condemnation of the greedy rich by insisting that those who prosper are the chosen, the spiritual elect. But there is a great difference between celebrating prosperity and the pursuit of unlimited wealth.” In later chapters hooks addresses the new wealth of American blacks and how allegiance to the new class interests of successful black people may supersede their racial solidarity. We must be mindful that an exploitative rule set allowed certain talents to break barriers most cannot and this should not be taken as the kind of success any of us consider complete. In general and from the outside, it does not appear that successful blacks are ignoring their brethren, but I do not think the same can be said of white citizens. hooks actually addresses this in her chapter entitled “White Poverty: The Politics of Invisibility.” While the black poor were ostracized in the larger society, they managed to stick together, live together, worship together. In some ways, this was unavoidable where the society was segregated. But poor whites lived everywhere, and because of segregation, had no common cause with poor blacks, and were not accepted by wealthier whites. Doubly despised, we could say. It is not so far from that time to today, when poor whites embarrass their wealthier brethren. hooks is saying that we must bridge this divide and recognize the basic humanity we all share, across race, class, sexuality, and national origin. We have to surrender our attachment to material possessions, eliminate the false hierarchies based on wealth, color, sex, etc. and interact based on more lasting values. A final few chapters suggest ways for us to ease into new relationships with one another.hooks is indispensable as a thought leader.

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.

For well over a decade, critical race theory--the school of thought that holds that race lies at the very nexus of American life--has roiled the legal academy. In recent years, however, the fundamental principles of the movement have influenced other academic disciplines, from sociology and politics to ethnic studies and history.And yet, while the critical race theory movement has spawned dozens of conferences and numerous books, no concise, accessible volume outlines its basic parameters and tenets. Here, then, from two of the founders of the movement, is the first primer on one of the most influential intellectual movements in American law and politics.