Customer Reviews

Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics

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Yearning is comprised of a series of essays, which identify, dissect, and communicate cultural politics with a focus on the world's lack of focus towards black women. Various overlooked and underrepresented groups in the media and world literature are given a voice too. Stereotypes and cultural ignorance is dealt with thoroughly. Not only does the author shoot down the upper-class white heterosexual male icon, she analyzes mentally, statistically and historically oppressed peoples own misgivings. All the while, the book is entertaining. bell hooks has a straight forward approach that forces one to look past his-story's rhetoric and recognize truths. hooks writes for those with a vocabulary, so if that's what you lack, grab Webster and learn a few words as you gain insight and recognition on cultural politics.

~ there are books that one reads and remembers,

there are others that become family members; books that stay with one throughout longines of suffering;

words from the author stoicly holding up the soul when one doesn't have the strength


~ this book lives by my nightstand; the words from bell hooks essay, "Choosing the margin,"
found me when i was an undergraduate and struggling; struggling with figuring out how to write

the truth;

moreso; how exactly to write the truth in front of everybody; how to look people in the eye; and still,

write the truth; it is a painful undertaking; this writing of the truth in front of everybody; this essay

will teach a writer more than any lecture on learning to live within

the safe language space; it will speak to the intellectual who is figuring out still,

how to say it;

the truth;

how to make it look good and feel good and taste good; there is no way to do this; and in a radical

chess move, ms. hooks writes as if to say there is a better way to keep the flame of your soul alive

learn to reside within the margin space ; learn to live within the group, by living on the outside, refuse to

step

inside the circle ; refuse

to become one who agrees to everything ; stay here in this radical space ; this

margin ; will sustain you ; by living within the margin ; this is where you will begin to thrive ;

call bell hooks radical call her racist call her what you will but she too, has mastered living in the margins

and this is where she will thrive and survive this is the great open radical space where no one can touch her ;

she is ultimately

one of the worlds purest forms

of greatness ;

i admire her ; and i cherish

nearly every single thing she ever writes ;

Being substantially outside of Bell Hooks' target audience, I confess a certain amount of difficulty in hearing what she has to say. Frankly, I had to read this book twice in order to get past her offensive terminology. "Whiteness" is the foundational problem for Hooks, and it leads to racism, colonization, and "oppressive structures of domination."

It is possible that Hooks uses inflammatory language with intention. Her overarching purpose seems to be to rekindle black solidarity in order to complete movement toward racial freedom and equality. This goal is laudable, but I find it easier to support Hooks when she rephrases this goal outside of racial class conflict. She advocates for control of one's destiny, self-actualization, community, and integrity of being, but she does not seem to realize that these are the yearnings of all humanity, not simply American blacks.

American culture, perhaps every human culture, is hierarchical. Even whites must deal with the "oppression" of those higher in the structure. Continued fracturing of middle and lower levels of the social structure along racial lines merely diffuses the power innate to each social class. Coalitions across racial, religious, and ethnic barriers are needed to compete with the hegemonic power of the social elites. Hooks passionate voice may actually work to maintain the secondary status of black Americans by making such coalitions more difficult.

I find two additional inconsistencies in Hooks message. First, she advocates solidarity and self-actualization, but I cannot help but wonder if these two goals can be harmonized. Secondly, I believe she is guilty of baseline distortion in her assumption of hopelessness as the black cultural norm. This implied victimization is self-defeating, and seems to deny the tremendous advances black Americans have made educationally and economically in the last twenty years.

It is possible that America needs to be continually confronted lest we become complacent in the progress we have made toward an egalitarian ideal. If so, Hooks' voice should be heard. But make no mistake about it, Hooks is not a voice of calm reason and balanced reflection. She writes from the fringes where ideals shine so brightly that the merest hint of a blemish is magnified.