bell hooks

Presenting radical new ways to think about love, the acclaimed cultural critic, feminist, and author examines the role of love in our personal and professional lives and how it can be used to end struggles between individuals, communities, and societies. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 40,000 first printing.

Acclaimed cultural critic bell hooks offers an open-hearted and welcoming vision of gender, sexuality, and society in this inspiring and accessible volume. In engaging and provocative style, bell hooks introduces a popular theory of feminism rooted in common sense and the wisdom of experience. Hers is a vision of a beloved community that appeals to all those committed to equality, mutual respect, and justice. hooks applies her critical analysis to the most contentious and challenging issues facing feminists today, including reproductive rights, violence, race, class, and work. With her customary insight and unsparing honesty, hooks calls for a feminism free from barriers but rich with rigorous debate. In language both eye-opening and optimistic, hooks encourages us to demand alternatives to patriarchal, racist, and homophobic culture, and to imagine a different future.

“When truth teller and careful writer bell hooks offers a book, I like to be standing at the bookshop when it opens.” –Maya Angelou Renowned visionary bell hooks explored the meaning of love in American culture with the critically acclaimed bestseller All About New Visions. She continued her national dialogue with the bestselling Black People and Love . Now hooks culminates her triumphant trilogy of love with The Female Search for Love. Intimate, revealing, provocative, Communion challenges every woman to courageously claim the search for love as the heroic journey we must all choose to be truly free. In her trademark commanding and lucid language, hooks explores the ways ideas about women and love were changed by the feminist movement, by women's full participation in the workforce, and by the culture of self-help, and reveals how women of all ages can bring love into every aspect of their lives, for all the years of their lives. Communion is the heart-to-heart talk every woman -- mother, daughter, friend, and lover -- needs to have.

In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks—writer, teacher, and insurgent black intellectual—writes about a new kind of education, educations as the practice of freedom. Teaching students to "transgress" against racial, sexual, and class boundaries in order to achieve the gift of freedom is, for hooks, the teacher's most important goal. Bell hooks speaks to the heart of education today: how can we rethink teaching practices in the age of multiculturalism? What do we do about teachers who do not want to teach, and students who do not want to learn? How should we deal with racism and sexism in the classroom? Full of passion and politics, Teaching to Transgress combines practical knowledge of the classroom with a deeply felt connection to the world of emotions and feelings. This is the rare book about teachers and students that dares to raise critical questions about eros and rage, grief and reconciliation, and the future of teaching itself. "To educate as the practice of freedom," writes bell hooks, "is a way of teaching that any one can learn." Teaching to Transgress is the record of one gifted teacher's struggle to make classrooms work. –from the back of the book

A groundbreaking work of feminist history and theory analyzing the complex relations between various forms of oppression. Ain't I a Woman examines the impact of sexism on black women during slavery, the historic devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism within the recent women's movement, and black women's involvement with feminism.

Everyone needs to love and be loved—even men. But to know love, men must be able to look at the ways that patriarchal culture keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their feelings, from loving. In The Will to Change, bell hooks gets to the heart of the matter and shows men how to express the emotions that are a fundamental part of who they are—whatever their age, marital status, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. But toxic masculinity punishes those fundamental emotions, and it’s so deeply ingrained in our society that it’s hard for men to not comply—but hooks wants to help change that. With trademark candor and fierce intelligence, hooks addresses the most common concerns of men, such as fear of intimacy and loss of their patriarchal place in society, in new and challenging ways. She believes men can find the way to spiritual unity by getting back in touch with the emotionally open part of themselves—and lay claim to the rich and rewarding inner lives that have historically been the exclusive province of women. A brave and astonishing work, The Will to Change is designed to help men reclaim the best part of themselves.

Author, activist, feminist, teacher, and artist bell hooks is celebrated as one of the nation's leading intellectuals. Born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, hooks drew her unique pseudonym from the name of her grandmother, an intelligent and strong-willed African American woman who inspired her to stand up against a dominating and repressive society. Her poetry, novels, memoirs, and children's books reflect her Appalachian upbringing and feature her struggles with racially integrated schools and unwelcome authority figures. One of Utne Reader 's "100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life," hooks has won wide acclaim from critics and readers alike. In Appalachian Elegy , bell hooks continues her work as an imagist of life's harsh realities in a collection of poems inspired by her childhood in the isolated hills and hidden hollows of Kentucky. At once meditative, confessional, and political, this poignant volume draws the reader deep into the experience of living in Appalachia. Touching on such topics as the marginalization of its people and the environmental degradation it has suffered over the years, hooks's poetry quietly elegizes the slow loss of an identity while also celebrating that which is constant, firmly rooted in a place that is no longer whole.

A sweeping examination of the core issues of sexual politics, bell hooks' new book Feminist Theory: from margin to center argues that the contemporary feminist movement must establish a new direction for the 1980s. Continuing the debates surrounding her controversial first book, Ain't I A Woman, bell hooks suggests that feminists have not succeeded in creating a mass movement against sexist oppression because the very foundation of women's liberation has, until now, not accounted for the complexity and diversity of female experience. In order to fulfill its revolutionary potential, feminist theory must begin by consciously transforming its own definition to encompass the lives and ideas of women on the margin. Hooks' work is a challenge to the women's movement and will have profound impact on all whose lives have been touched by feminism and its insights.

Fifty poetic works by the renowned feminist theorist illuminate the human experience of love, in a volume that explores such topics as the link between seduction and surrender, the intensity of desire, and the anguish of death. 17,500 first printing.

One of our country's premier cultural and social critics, bell hooks has always maintained that eradicating racism and eradicating sexism must go hand in hand. But whereas many women have been recognized for their writing on gender politics, the female voice has been all but locked out of the public discourse on race. Killing Rage speaks to this imbalance. These twenty-three essays are written from a black and feminist perspective, and they tackle the bitter difficulties of racism by envisioning a world without it. They address a spectrum of topics having to do with race and racism in the United States: psychological trauma among African Americans; friendship between black women and white women; anti-Semitism and racism; and internalized racism in movies and the media. And in the title essay, hooks writes about the "killing rage"—the fierce anger of black people stung by repeated instances of everyday racism—finding in that rage a healing source of love and strength and a catalyst for positive change. bell hooks is Distinguished Professor of English at City College of New York. She is the author of the memoir Bone Black as well as eleven other books. She lives in New York City.

“A manual for fixing our culture…In writing that is elegant and penetratingly simple, [hooks] gives voice to some things we may know in our hearts but need an interpreter like her to process.”—Black Issues Book Review Bestselling author, acclaimed visionary and cultural critic bell hooks continues her exploration of the meaning of love in contemporary American society, offering groundbreaking, critical insight about Black people and love. Written from both historical and cultural perspectives, Salvation takes an incisive look at the transformative power of love in the lives of African Americans. Whether talking about the legacy of slavery, relationships and marriage in Black life, the prose and poetry of Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin, and Maya Angelou, the liberation movements of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, or hip hop and gangsta rap culture, hooks lets us know what love’s got to do with it. Combining the passionate politics of W.E.B. DuBois with fresh, contemporary insights, hooks brilliantly offers new visions that will heal our nation’s wounds from a culture of lovelessness. Her writings on love and its impact on race, class, family, history, and popular culture raise all the relevant issues. This is work that helps us heal. Salvation shows us how to create beloved American communities.

Drawing on both her roots in Kentucky and her adventures with Manhattan Coop boards, Where We Stand is a successful black woman's reflection--personal, straight forward, and rigorously honest--on how our dilemmas of class and race are intertwined, and how we can find ways to think beyond them.

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« Pour faire simple, le féminisme est un mouvement qui vise à mettre fin au sexisme, à l’exploitation et à l’oppression sexistes. » Ainsi débute cette efficace et accessible introduction à la théorie féministe, écrite par l’une de ses figures les plus influentes, la militante noire-américaine bell hooks. Conçu pour pouvoir être lu par tout le monde, ce livre répond de manière simple et argumentée à la question « qu’est-ce que le féminisme ? », en soulignant l’importance du mouvement féministe aujourd’hui. Ce petit guide, à mettre entre toutes les mains, nous invite à rechercher des alternatives à la culture patriarcale, raciste et homophobe, et à bâtir ainsi un avenir différent.

In these twelve essays, bell hooks digs ever deeper into the personal and political consequences of contemporary representations of race and ethnicity within a white supremacist culture.

"When women get together and talk about men, the news is almost always bad news," writes bell hooks. "If the topic gets specific and the focus is on black men, the news is even worse." In this powerful new book, bell hooks arrests our attention from the first page. Her title--We Real Cool; her subject--the way in which both white society and weak black leaders are failing black men and youth. Her subject is taboo: "this is a culture that does not love black males: " "they are not loved by white men, white women, black women, girls or boys. And especially, black men do not love themselves. How could they? How could they be expected to love, surrounded by so much envy, desire, and hate?

In Teaching Critical Thinking, renowned cultural critic and progressive educator bell hooks addresses some of the most compelling issues facing teachers in and out of the classroom today. In a series of short, accessible, and enlightening essays, hooks explores the confounding and sometimes controversial topics that teachers and students have urged her to address since the publication of the previous best-selling volumes in her Teaching series, Teaching to Transgress and Teaching Community. The issues are varied and broad, from whether meaningful teaching can take place in a large classroom setting to confronting issues of self-esteem. One professor, for example, asked how black female professors can maintain positive authority in a classroom without being seen through the lens of negative racist, sexist stereotypes. One teacher asked how to handle tears in the classroom, while another wanted to know how to use humor as a tool for learning. Addressing questions of race, gender, and class in this work, hooks discusses the complex balance that allows us to teach, value, and learn from works written by racist and sexist authors. Highlighting the importance of reading, she insists on the primacy of free speech, a democratic education of literacy. Throughout these essays, she celebrates the transformative power of critical thinking. This is provocative, powerful, and joyful intellectual work. It is a must read for anyone who is at all interested in education today.

What are the conditions needed for our nation to bridge cultural and racial divides? By "writing beyond race," noted cultural critic bell hooks models the constructive ways scholars, activists, and readers can challenge and change systems of domination. In the spirit of previous classics like Outlaw Culture and Reel to Real , this new collection of compelling essays interrogates contemporary cultural notions of race, gender, and class. From the films Precious and Crash to recent biographies of Malcolm X and Henrietta Lacks, hooks offers provocative insights into the way race is being talked about in this "post-racial" era.

Respondona trata sobre el significado de la conciencia feminista en la vida diaria, la recuperación personal, la superación de la supremacía blanca y masculina, las relaciones íntimas y, todo ello, explorando el punto donde lo público y lo privado se encuentran. Cuando era niña, bell hooks aprendió que dirigirse de igual a igual a una figura de autoridad y atreverse a estar en desacuerdo o a dar una opinión significaba ser «respondona». En esta colección de ensayos tan personales como teóricos, hooks reflexiona sobre sus temas clásicos: racismo, feminismo, política y pedagogía. Una de las cosas que descubre es que, para los oprimidos, los colonizados, los explotados y los que se levantan y luchan mano a mano, pasar del silencio a alzar la voz es un gesto de desafío que cura y que hace posible una vida y un crecimiento nuevos.

Este ensayo clásico se traduce ahora por primera vez al español. En él se examina la opresión que las mujeres negras han sufrido y siguen sufriendo desde el siglo XVII hasta la actualidad. En ¿Acaso no soy yo una mujer? hooks explora varios temas recurrentes en su trabajo posterior: el impacto histórico del sexismo y el racismo en las mujeres negras, los roles de los medios de comunicación y del sistema educativo en la representación de la mujer negra, la idea de un patriarcado capitalista-supremacista blanco y el desprecio por cuestiones de raza y clase dentro del feminismo. hooks insiste en que las luchas por poner fin al racismo y al sexismo están entrecruzadas y enfoca su escritura en la interseccionalidad de raza, capitalismo y género.

“A canvas of vividly impressionistic splashes of growing up young, gifted, Black, and female.” ― The Philadelphia Inquirer In this memoir of perceptions and ideas, renowned feminist intellectual bell hooks presents a stirringly intimate account of growing up in the South. Stitching together the gossamer threads of her girlhood memories, hooks shows us one strong-spirited child’s journey toward becoming a writer. Along the way, hooks sheds light on the vulnerability of children, the special unfurling of female creativity, and the imbalance of a society that confers marriage’s joys upon men and its silences on women. In a world where daughters and daddies are strangers under the same roof, and crying children are often given something to cry about, hooks uncovers the solace to be found in solitude, the comfort to be had in the good company of books. Bone Black allows us to bear witness to the awakening of a legendary author’s awareness that writing is her most vital breath. “With the emotion of poetry, the narrative of a novel, and the truth of experience, bell hooks weaves a girlhood memoir you won’t be able to put down―or forget. Bone Black takes us into the cave of self-creation.” ―Gloria Steinem

In Reel To Real , bell hooks talks back to films as a way to engage the pedagogy of cinema--the way film teaches its audience. bell hooks comes to film as a cultural critic, fascinated by the issues movies raise--the ways cinema depicts race, sex, and class. Reel To Real collects hooks' classic essays on films such as Paris Is Burning or the infamous "Whose Pussy Is It" essay about Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It , as well as newer work on Pulp Fiction, Crooklyn and Waiting To Exhale . hooks also examines the world of independent cinema. Conversations with filmmakers Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, and Arthur Jaffa are linked with critical essays, including a piece on Larry Clark's Kids , to show that cinema can function subversively as well as maintain the status quo.

O que é o amor, afinal? Será esta uma pergunta tão subjetiva, tão opaca? Para bell hooks, quando pulverizamos seu significado, ficamos cada vez mais distantes de entendê-lo. Neste livro, primeiro volume de sua Trilogia do Amor, a autora procura elucidar o que é, de fato, o amor, seja nas relações familiares, românticas e de amizade ou na vivência religiosa. Na contramão do pensamento corrente, que tantas vezes entende o amor como sinal de fraqueza e irracionalidade, bell hooks defende que o amor é mais do que um sentimento — é uma ação capaz de transformar o niilismo, a ganância e a obsessão pelo poder que dominam nossa cultura. É através da construção de uma ética amorosa que seremos capazes de edificar uma sociedade verdadeiramente igualitária, fundamentada na justiça e no compromisso com o bem-estar coletivo. *** Em uma sociedade que considera falar de amor algo naïf, a proposta apresentada por bell hooks ao escrever sobre o tema é corajosa e desafiadora. E o desafio é colocarmos o amor na centralidade da vida. Ao afirmar que começou a pensar e a escrever sobre o amor quando encontrou “cinismo em lugar de esperança nas vozes de jovens e velhos”, e que o cinismo é a maior barreira que pode existir diante do amor, porque ele intensifica nossas dúvidas e nos paralisa, bell hooks faz a defesa da prática transformadora do amor, que manda embora o medo e liberta nossa alma. Assim, ela nos convoca a regressar ao amor. Se o desamor é a ordem do dia no mundo contemporâneo, falar de amor pode ser revolucionário. — Silvane Silva, no Prefácio à edição brasileira *** Quando eu era criança, tinha clareza de que a vida não valia ser vivida se não conhecêssemos o amor. Quem me dera pudesse dizer que atingi essa consciência por causa do amor que sentia. Foi sua falta, no entanto, que me fez saber quanto ele é importante. […] Despertei do meu estado de transe e fiquei atordoada ao descobrir que o mundo em que eu vivia, o mundo do presente, já não era um mundo aberto ao amor. E percebi que tudo o que eu ouvia ao meu redor evidenciava que o desamor tinha se tornado a ordem do dia. Sinto nosso país se afastando do amor com a mesma intensidade que senti o abandono do amor na infância. Com esse afastamento, nos arriscamos a penetrar em um quadro de selvageria de espírito tão intensa que talvez jamais encontremos o caminho de volta. — bell hooks, no Prefácio

From legendary author and critic bell hooks and multi-Caldecott Medalist Chris Raschka comes a new way to talk about race and identity that will appeal to parents of the youngest readers.The skin I'm in is just a covering. It cannot tell my story. If you want to know who I am, you have got to come inside and open your heart way wide.Race matters, but only so much--what's most important is who we are on the inside. Looking beyond skin, going straight to the heart, we find in each other the treasures stored down deep. Learning to cherish those treasures, to be all we imagine ourselves to be, makes us free.This award-winning book, celebrates all that makes us unique and different and offers a strong, timely and timeless message of loving yourself and others.

Ten years ago, bell hooks astonished readers with Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom . Now comes Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope - a powerful, visionary work that will enrich our teaching and our lives. Combining critical thinking about education with autobiographical narratives, hooks invites readers to extend the discourse of race, gender, class and nationality beyond the classroom into everyday situations of learning. bell hooks writes candidly about her own experiences. Teaching, she explains, can happen anywhere, any time - not just in college classrooms but in churches, in bookstores, in homes where people get together to share ideas that affect their daily lives. In Teaching Community bell hooks seeks to theorize from the place of the positive, looking at what works. Writing about struggles to end racism and white supremacy, she makes the useful point that "No one is born a racist. Everyone makes a choice." Teaching Community tells us how we can choose to end racism and create a beloved community. hooks looks at many issues-among them, spirituality in the classroom, white people looking to end racism, and erotic relationships between professors and students. Spirit, struggle, service, love, the ideals of shared knowledge and shared learning - these values motivate progressive social change. Teachers of vision know that democratic education can never be confined to a classroom. Teaching - so often undervalued in our society -- can be a joyous and inclusive activity. bell hooks shows the way. "When teachers teach with love, combining care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust, we are often able to enter the classroom and go straight to the heart of the matter, which is knowing what to do on any given day to create the best climate for learning."

bell hooks, feminista e activista norte-americana, discute em Não serei eu mulher? questões como a feminilidade negra, através da análise do impacto do sexismo sobre as mulheres negras durante a escravatura, o envolvimento das mulheres negras nos movimentos feministas e o racismo entre feministas. Escrito durante a licenciatura da autora e publicado apenas em 1981, Não serei eu mulher? é desde então louvado como reflexão pioneira e clássico obrigatório da teoria feminista.

Tothom necessita estimar i ser estimat, fins i tot els homes. Però per conèixer l'amor, els homes han de poder veure les formes en què la cultura patriarcal els impedeix conèixer-se a si mateixos, estar en contacte amb els seus sentiments, estimar. A 'La voluntat de canviar', bell hooks arriba a el moll de l'assumpte i mostra als homes com expressar les emocions que són una part fonamental de qui són, independentment de la seva edat, estat civil, ètnia o orientació sexual. Però la masculinitat tòxica castiga aquestes emocions fonamentals, i està tan profundament arrelada en la nostra societat que és difícil per als homes no obeir, però hooks vol ajudar a canviar això. Amb una franquesa característica i una intel·ligència ferotge, Hooks aborda les preocupacions més comunes dels homes, com la por a la intimitat i la pèrdua del seu lloc patriarcal en la societat, de formes noves i desafiants. Ella creu que els homes poden trobar el camí a la unitat espiritual tornant a estar en contacte amb la part emocionalment oberta de si mateixos i reivindicant les riques i gratificants vides interiors que històricament han estat el domini exclusiu de les dones. Una obra valenta i sorprenent, 'La voluntat de canviar' està pensat per ajudar els homes a recuperar el millor de si mateixos.