Ain't I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism

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Summary: Everyone should read this book and embrace what it offers...
Review: bell hooks clearly illustrates how the black woman is the dual embodiment of racial and gender injustices. This is the author's forum to address significant social and political issues that continually render African-American women invisible and devalue their experiences collectively, as well as individually. She manages to do this in a effective and unbiased fashion. hooks' delivers an irrefutable arguement that will encourage readers to open their hearts and minds to confront their own internalized racism, sexism, and classism.

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Summary: A Moms Mabley for Intellectuals!
Review: I HAD TO READ THIS BOOK FOR A COURSE IN COLLEGE ENTITLED THE BLACK WOMAN EXPERIENCE. PRIOR TO THIS COURSE I DID NOT KNOW bell hooks SINCE THEN I HAVE READ EVERY ONE OF HER BOOKS I COULD FIND. AIN'T I A WOMAN IS POWERFUL READING YOU WILL OPEN IT AND WILL BE ENLIGHTEN ON ONE ASPECT OF BLACK WOMEN'S LIVES.

Rating:
Summary: GREAT
Review: I HAD TO READ THIS BOOK FOR A COURSE IN COLLEGE ENTITLED THE BLACK WOMAN EXPERIENCE. PRIOR TO THIS COURSE I DID NOT KNOW bell hooks SINCE THEN I HAVE READ EVERY ONE OF HER BOOKS I COULD FIND. AIN'T I A WOMAN IS POWERFUL READING YOU WILL OPEN IT AND WILL BE ENLIGHTEN ON ONE ASPECT OF BLACK WOMEN'S LIVES.

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Summary: Great Book!!
Review: I love this book! I think she had done an excellent job on dissecting the classist, racist, sexist structures that have kept black and mixed black women at the bottom of all the racial/class/gender hierarchy. She wrote a chapter about how privileged white women historically used their racial and class privileges to block black and other women of color(mexican, american indian,puerto rican) from access to wealth, power, influence, and especially, upward mobility. They also blocked poor and working class white women(to a lesser extent, for they also have white skin privilege like their sisters)from realizing their potential. Privileged white women just want to preserve their privileges they obtain and keep other women from having them. White feminists tend to protect the status quo, mainly privileged white christian heterosexual men. For example, the Anita Hill case. It have brought far more changes in politics and, once again, white women have benefited more than black women(new 2001 Senate will have 13 women, all white).

As for the antimiscegnation laws, I knew they were originally enacted to prevent white men to marry black women. If a lot of powerful white men were to marry black women and other women of color besides east asian and mexican women, white power will be gone for good. Which was the reason why American media didn't covered the royal wedding of the Prince of Liechtenstein and the black Panamanian woman. They do not like to see black women taking their cherished places as wives of powerful white men. Bell Hooks have done an excellent job on her book. I hope I look forward to see her publishing more of her works soon.

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Summary: Useful but rudimentary; like a cliff notes to other thinkers
Review: I read this book 6 years ago on holiday and I couldn't put it down. I tell you this just to let you know that although the subject matter may appear "heavy", hooks style of writing makes the most complicated theories and intellectual of thoughts on Womanism/Feminism easy to understand and entertaining.

This a thought provoking read. For example her theory on the propagation of miscegenation ( the law that banned interracial marriage and our current negative attidudes towards this today) really made me think. Briefly, she theorised that as white men held the key to power the law was brought in not to protect white women from black men but to stop black women marrying white men. If say a black woman married the President she would also have access to power via her direct access and ability to influence the most powerful man in the world.

hooks as a writer is brilliant, she's inspiring, informative and imaginative. Which must be quite difficult given the subject matter she deals with. Start with Aint I a Woman and you'll go onto read her whole library. Enjoy.

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Summary: A profound examination of racism/sexism and black women
Review: This is the first book by bell hooks that I have read--and it won't be the last! Hooks lays groundwork in the early chapters of "Ain't I A Woman" which make her later analysis of modern race/gender politics perfectly astute. She starts with a discussion of slavery and its impact on not only the men and women slaves, but the social hierarchy of white women. In so doing, she effectively argues that since our society is a patriarchy--and specifically, a white-dominated patriarchy--feminism has ignored black women's needs in favor of the white women who, in order to maintain their position in the patriarchal power structure, must (even as they give lip-service to "independence") make sure that their movement does not alienate the group which controls that power structure--namely, white men. Bell hooks' riveting style of writing and her clear, articulate arguments, have given me a tremendous new understanding of how our society works, and a glimpse of what it will take to help change it. I highly recommend this book.

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Summary: Few books truly change your life
Review: This one changed mine. I urge all young women of color to read this book while you are still in high school or college. Do that for yourself. I urge all other humans to read it as soon as you can. It's the seminal work of bell hooks career, which continues to enlighten and enrich all of us. Unlike some other "classic" works, it deserves the designation, for it remains as timely today as it was at publication.

Her observations are wise. Her grasp of history is absolute. Her ideas stimulate intelligent and loving thought, conversation, and action. Read this book.

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Summary: Here is where it all began
Review: Those who would dismiss Hook's scholarship and arguments as substandard are truly threatened by the radical observations she makes about the world and black women's relationship to it and in it.

The "Clif Notes" version Hooks has been maligned for by her critics has been practiced openly by white feminists (and predominantly white groups) so I honestly cannot see what the criticism is about unless it is the particular ideas themselves and not the way they are phrased. Hook's work is radical because it forces readers to deal with the less than favorable aspects of American history.

Confronting the real truth about America and the way it has historically treated and maligned women of color (and how they moblized against this) can be a challenging read, but only if the reader comes in with a defensive mind, prepared to discount the work anyway. Individuals with an open mind should love the pages of this now-classic work.

I have always loved this book and it's practical insights on gender roles and a multifaceted approach to reproductive rights. Although Hooks is pro-choice, she reminds us that legalized abortion should be only one aspect of reproductive rights, and freedom from sterilzation abuse and full information on contraceptives is also important. It is a testament to Hooks and other activists that this paradigm has been adopted by the general feminist movement.

True women's liberation involves the liberation of all women from all artificially constructed notions about gender and ethnicity. While we as a nation have historically seen the civil rights movement as primarily for black men, and the feminist movement as being for white women, we have silenced and subjugated the black feminist who has one foot in each of these communities and is going to weave together her own experiences.