White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness
Traditional debates concerning racially hierarchical societies have tended to focus on the experience of being black. EMWhite Women, Race Matters/EM breaks with this tradition by focusing on the particular experiences of white women in a racially hierarchical society. By considering the ways in which their experience not only contributes to but challenges the reproduction of […]
The Dancing Mind: Speech upon Acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished C ontribution to American Letters
On the occasion of her acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters on the sixth of November, 1996, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison speaks with brevity and passion to the pleasures, the difficulties, the necessities, of the reading/writing life in our time. “She was our conscience. Our seer. Our truthteller.” —Oprah […]
The Womanist Reader: The First Quarter Century of Womanist Thought
Comprehensive in its coverage, The Womanist Reader is the first volume to anthologize the major works of womanist scholarship. Charting the course of womanist theory from its genesis as Alice Walker’s African-American feminism, through Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi’s African womanism and Clenora Hudson-Weems’ Africana womanism, to its present-day expression as a global, anti-oppressionist perspective rooted in […]
Want to Start a Revolution?: Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle
Uncovers the often overlooked stories of the women who shaped the black freedom struggle The story of the black freedom struggle in America has been overwhelmingly male-centric, starring leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Huey Newton. With few exceptions, black women have been perceived as supporting actresses; as behind-the-scenes or peripheral activists, […]
Black Women against the Land Grab: The Fight for Racial Justice in Brazil
In Brazil and throughout the African diaspora, black women, especially poor black women, are rarely considered leaders of social movements let alone political theorists. But in the northeastern city of Salvador, Brazil, it is these very women who determine how urban policies are established. Focusing on the Gamboa de Baixo neighborhood in Salvador’s city center, Black […]
An Open Letter From Assata Shakur
Killing Rage: Ending Racism
“hooks’s books help us not only to decolonize our minds, souls, and bodies; on a deeper level, they touch our lives.” ―Cornel West More than two decades before Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movement roiled America, bell hooks was declaring that abolishing racism and eradicating sexism must go hand in hand. In Killing Rage, one […]
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
When Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center was first published in 1984, it was welcomed and praised by feminist thinkers who wanted a new vision. Even so, individual readers frequently found the theory “unsettling” or “provocative.” Today, the blueprint for feminist movement presented in the book remains as provocative and relevant as ever. Written in hooks’s characteristic […]
Combabee River Collective Statement
Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday
From one of this country’s most important intellectuals comes a brilliant analysis of the blues tradition that examines the careers of three crucial black women blues singers through a feminist lens. Angela Davis provides the historical, social, and political contexts with which to reinterpret the performances and lyrics of Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and […]
