Review by Booklist Review
Hooks brings passion and an updated perspective from her Teaching to Transgress (1994) to this challenging look at the failings of educational institutions and how we can bring hope and renewal to teaching. Drawing on her own experiences, she melds anecdote, autobiography, and critical analysis in an exploration of a range of issues, from educational standards to the unchallenged use of education in support of capitalist patriarchy. For truly effective education, she advocates partnerships between students and teachers and the expansion of teaching beyond school settings to include community organizations and other more public arenas. Furthermore, noting the reluctance to discuss social injustices, hooks advocates teaching as an opportunity to confront racial and sexual biases, and to heighten consciousness of students across race, ethnicity, and sexual orientations. In a chapter on the attitudes of whites regarding racism, hooks demonstrates that true racial equality requires profound individual efforts to understand the truth of our essential humanness. For readers interested in cultural criticism and educational issues, hooks offers her usual thought-provoking viewpoint. --Vanessa Bush Copyright 2003 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Readers of hooks's prolific body of work on feminism, racism, cultural politics, art and education will find much that is familiar here. Grounded in autobiography and storytelling and written for an intelligent lay audience, these essays exhort readers to keep up the struggle in difficult times. A distinguishing characteristic of hooks's work is the challenge to recognize, confront and overcome "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy," a recurring phrase that captures her hallmark theme: oppression occurs at the intersections of race, gender and the dominant economic system. This work updates her thinking with post-September 11 reflections on domination and hope, and contains refreshingly original thinking about spirituality, family values and even erotic relationships between professors and students. hooks, a self-defined "[l]eftist dissident feminist black intellectual," embodies the clash of 20th-century cultural politics. She writes candidly about her own racially segregated youth, her struggles to overcome discrimination in the academic workplace and her efforts to find common ground with white feminists. hooks's voice is unique in that she manages to balance a relentless critique of oppressive forces in society with the open invitation to participate in "beloved communities where there is no domination." Containing more inspiration than concrete strategies, the book may leave practicing teachers wanting more in the way of specifics about how to practice antiracist pedagogy, transform classrooms and bring about a just society. But the author's clear and consistent voice for progressive, democratic education adds an important dimension to society's thinking about shared values and the creation of a loving and fair community. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Fans of hooks's earlier works, especially the landmark Teaching To Transgress, will welcome this new collection of essays on combating racism and sexism in education. Drawing extensively on her personal experiences as both student and teacher, hooks articulates a vision of democratic, progressive education that focuses on the classroom as a "life-sustaining and mind-expanding" place. As with her previous books, her latest is passionate, opinionated, and challenging. While her statement that a "[commitment] to teaching well is a commitment to service" will attract some, her claims that racism, sexism, and class conflict are driving forces in the curriculum and in relations between teachers and students will unsettle many. Despite its challenging nature (or, more likely, because of it), the collection will interest students of education, ethnic and cultural studies, and women's studies. Recommended for academic collections.-Scott Walter, Washington State Univ. Lib., Pullman (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
