Killing Rage: Ending Racism
Bell Hooks
(Author)
Description
One of our country's premier cultural and social critics, the author of such powerful and influential books as Ain't I a Woman and Black Looks, Bell Hooks has always maintained that eradicating racism and eradicating sexism must be achieved 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, most of them new works, are written from a black and feminist perspective, and they tackle the bitter difficulties of racism by envisioning a world without it. Hooks defiantly creates positive plans for the future rather than dwell in theories of a crisis beyond repair. The essays here address a spectrum of topics 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; internalized racism in the movies and media. Hooks presents a challenge to the patriarchal family model, explaining how it perpetuates sexism and oppression in black life. She calls out the tendency of much of mainstream America to conflate "black rage" with murderous, pathological impulses, rather than seeing it as a positive state of being. And in the title essay she 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 productive change. Her analysis is rigorous and her language unsparingly critical, but Hooks writes with a common touch that has made her a favorite of readers far from universities.Bell Hooks's work contains multitudes; she is a feminist who includes and celebrates men, a critic of racism who is not separatist or Afrocentric, an academic who cares about popular culture.
Product Details
Price
$19.99
$18.59
Publisher
Holt Paperbacks
Publish Date
October 15, 1996
Pages
288
Dimensions
5.4 X 8.1 X 0.9 inches | 0.6 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780805050271
BISAC Categories:
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Become an affiliateAbout the Author
bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins, 1952-2021) was a pioneering feminist whose writings revealed how the specific life experiences of Black women were marginalized by the idea that feminism represented all women equally. A professor of English, African and Afro-American studies, American literature, and women's studies, she taught at the University of Southern California, Yale, Oberlin College, City College of New York, and Kentucky's Berea College, which established the bell hooks Institute for her work.
The author of more than thirty books of literary criticism, children's fiction, poetry, and autobiography, including Killing Rage: Ending Racism, Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood, Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life, and Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work, hooks was nominated for the NAACP Image Award, won an American Book Award, and was named one of Time's 100 Women of the Year in 2020.Reviews
"Her books help us not only to decolonize our minds, souls, and bodies; on a deeper level, they touch our lives." --Cornel West
"Almost everyone's assumptions about race will be challenged in this volume . . . Anyone who is not in denial about racism will be motivated to work for its demise after reading Killing Rage." --Emerge ". . . Anyone who is not in denial about racism will be motivated to work for its demise after reading Killing Rage." --Emerge "An angry book that pulls no punches . . . Her frankness and willingness to face up to the divisive issues that refuse to go away make her a voice to be reckoned with in the debate on race in America." --The New York Review of Books