Bell Hooks: The First Half of Talking Back

Out of the first half of Bell Hook's book Talking Back: Thinking Feminist|Thinking Black I found the first chapter, titled "talking back," to be the most striking. While I have read parts of Bell Hook's works before, this was the first time that I have not been looking at them from a sociological perspective. Looking back at my annotations I was almost surprised by what I had noted; the different domains in which black males and females dominate (the church and the home, respectively) (pg 5), the fact that girls are silenced and seen as having no future in speaking while boys were encouraged to become preachers (pg 6), or that girls could be threatened with the label of madness for speaking too much (pg 7).

While Bell Hooks sites many differences between the treatment of boys and girls in regard to speech, she also introduces the necessity to "protect the spirit from forces that would break it" (pg 7). The breaking of spirit is something that Bell Hooks talks about later in her book, notably in regards to finding ones voice and in higher education. I found the inclusion of the resilience needed in order to maintain ones creativity made Bell Hooks approach much more holistic. Incorporating the internal emotions associated with interpersonal interactions and the patriarchal hierarchy implemented in the United States makes Bell Hooks work more than simply an analysis of concepts related to Women's Studies.

Along with internal emotions, I was interested in Bell Hooks discussion of "true speaking" as " an act of resistance, a political gesture" (pg 8). Building off of this, Bell Hooks states that anything that challenges domination is a threat, and must be eliminated. In relation to finding ones voice, which Bell Hooks discusses in a later chapter, I though this was very telling as to why more oppressed men and women of all races and colors do not speak out. However, this "voice" must be found in order to move from an oppressed object to a subject who can speak for themselves.

Preventing oppressed individuals from finding this voice are systems of racial, gender based, and class domination. This was the first time that I had ever read or heard of racism, sexism, and classism as all contributing to the oppression of certain individuals, in this case black females. Now that I have had time to process this idea I am surprised that this integral approach is not taken more often. Within the United States institutions do not work independently of one another, so why would systems of domination?

From what I have read so far I think Bell Hooks offers some great concepts and ideas to help frame ones thinking about feminism and what it means to different genders, races, and classes. I feel that the perspective offered is a comprehensive and honest one, and that Bell Hooks does a great job of integrating herself into the text, creating not only an academic work but also a narrative.