Rebellion: Essays, 1980-1991 [Paperback]

Minnie Bruce Pratt (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Pratt's ( Crimes Against Nature ) 11 polished, articulate essays offer a striking example of everyday philosophy at work: a feminist assessing her experiences and learning from them, whether remembering her mother as a social worker in the South or noting the false cheer in exchanges between herself--a white woman--and her black janitor, divided by a social and historical chasm. In "Rebellion," Pratt looks back on the small Alabama town where she was raised, which honored the memory of the Confederacy but gave short shrift to contemporarycorrect? ok rebels against a social order based on inequality. In "Identity: Skin Blood Heartno commas ," the author describes breaking through the "protective" barriers that circumscribed her youth as she tries to "learn a way of looking at the world that is more accurate, complex, multilayered." "I Plead Guilty to Being a Lesbian" explores her act of civil disobedience to protest the Supreme Court's refusal to invalidate state sodomy laws. In "My Mother's Question" Pratt considers what it means to have money or privilege, probing the provenance of what one of her students called "my money" and wondering who has lost by her gain.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Pratt's appropriately titled collection of essays reflects on what it is to be different in our primarily white, male-dominated society. Beginning with an essay on her childhood, she recounts growing up as a white middle-class girl in the South, socialized by the white, Christian male's notion of what a female should be. She writes, "I did not even think of what I and my mother and other women were doing when we agreed, silently, unconsciously, to wear shoes of a certain style in certain places, to walk only in certain places at certain times, to accept without much question what was going on outside our home, the doings of white men . . . ." She also describes the ostracism she experienced as a mother who had her sons taken away from her when she chose to love another woman, noting that society simply would not, could not tolerate her or anyone else being different. Pratt has something to say about the contradictions in our society and her sensitivity is acute and justified. She is at times long-winded, but her insights are truly brilliant and deserve to be heard. For women's studies collections.
- Patricia A. Sarles, Mt. Sinai Medical Ctr. Lib., New York
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: Firebrand Books (October 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563410060
• ISBN-13: 978-1563410062
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,739,724 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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