An Analysis Of Talking Back By Bell Hooks

The ideas of “feminism” and “being a feminist” have morphed and changed throughout the years. In Talking Back, published in 1989, bell hooks discusses her experience as a black feminist woman. While ideally there should be no negative connotation to this identity, I have been noticing recently that “feminist” has become almost a dirty word among certain people. The other day, I overheard a conversation at lunch about how a large presence of feminists and their opinions had “ruined” a classroom discussion. Although there are some misguided individuals who use this identity, they are behaving in a way that disrespects the title. The aim of the feminist movement is not to put any specific group on a pedestal, or to promote the idea that women are the ultimate, helpless victims of all oppression. The goal of true feminism is for women to exhibit strength and solidarity with each other, and to …show more content…
Bell hooks, as a black woman, speaks as a victim of both. As a younger woman, hooks would search for reading material that focused on the dynamic of racism and sexism together. However, she could not find much (if any): “When I began the long search in history, sociology, and psychology texts for material, I was really surprised and even shocked that black women were rarely rated a category in anyone’s index. . . .I could not find material that made connections between racism and sexism or research on black people that fully considered gender differences” (hooks 150). There is a certain occurrence with white feminists, where they will ignore the struggles that women of color face due to their race, because it does not directly affect them. If there is not mutual respect between all subsections of the feminist movement, with each individual taking into consideration how they may help people of all races, then once again the most important goals cannot be reached. Hooks