The Rooster’s Egg (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a series of ruminative and sometimes trenchant essays, Columbia University law professor Williams (The Alchemy of Race and Rights) reaches beyond legal cases to probe America's obsession with race. The campus crisis over "political correctness," she observes, is a necessary part of our halting attempt to have a serious conversation about race at a time when integration now often means assimilation. Listening to right-wing talk radio, Williams doesn't froth at outrageous comments about race and gender but discerns "a much more general contempt for the world." She deftly deconstructs the media war against Lani Guinier, President Clinton's nominee for assistant attorney general for civil rights, noting that demagogic City College professor Leonard Jeffries got a greater chance to have his views aired?again and again. A single mother of an adopted son, Williams dissects myths about single mothers and reveals how race and racism affect the adoption market. These essays, some published in magazines like Ms. and the Nation, are usually interesting; however, they don't gain much as a collection.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

This rhetorical style is the book's strength as well as its weakness: the pages turn easily, but sometimes the essays appear to be little more than the ramblings of a very smart dinner companion. Over all, though, Ms. Williams ... emerges as a thoughtful social critic from the left. While her conclusions do not surprise, her arguments are anything but doctrinaire. -- The New York Times Book Review, Saul B. Shapiro

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Product Details

• Paperback: 276 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (April 25, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674779436
• ISBN-13: 978-0674779433
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,311,402 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riposte to previous reviewer, October 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Rooster’s Egg (Hardcover)

I disagree with your dismissal of this book. I found it very serious and thought-provoking. As a feminist theorist I am concerned with reading everything available on matters of gender and bias; Williams' book was valuable for the many things she says of which I was not aware of or which I had not previously considered.

Your concern that Williams' book "dilutes" feminism, or that it is not "radical" enough in its treatment of education, shows more about your particular concerns than it does about her work. Dismissing Williams' thought in the way you do, in fact, suggests to me that you have a particular bias of your own concerning what is properly part of "women's interests" and are unwilling to confront Williams's work seriously and allow it to affect your view of race and gender prejudice. I can hardly imagine anyone better placed, or better able, to diagnose and analyze the "persistence of prejudice" than Professor Williams, and I think she ought to be listened to even though there are specific contentions within the book with which I disagree. Her style, which combines personal reflections with wider theorizations of race, gender, and prejudice, is quite germane methodologically, and her insights are productive ones. I believe that anyone seriously concerned with understanding issues of education, prejudice, law, and culture could derive benefit from serious reading of Williams' work.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars QUESTION EVERYTHING, April 21, 2006

By	Beatrice Izzey "Nanny Dog" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

One can reach the pinnacles of law, yet Williams forces us to question everything: the structure of power, the continuing inequities, the superficialness of progress....

It's depressing really yet the author makes it fun to read and learn about unspeakable realities.

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hard to be especially enthusiastic, but..., May 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Rooster’s Egg (Hardcover)

This is hardly the sort of book that is going to impress everyone with revelatory arguments, or even offer a new perspective upon contemporary cultural discourse, but Williams is at least occasionally lively in her discussions of feminism. I'm afraid I don't find her disucssions of education even the least bit compelling, and we need to turn to more radical and inventive/transgressive voices for that. Perhaps this book could be of use to high school students, however, in that it would promote classroom discussions without presenting any difficulties of argument such as that produced by more progressive thinkers. Prof. Williams is best at short, snappy chit chat regarding race and feminism, and I'm surprised that she has taken it upon herself to author entire books which might dilute the field. However, as an African American who is challenging the contemporary paradigms of race in this society, I'm pleased to discover all the help I can get.