bell hooks

"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?"

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.

As feminist scholarship has developed, it has become increasingly clear that the practice of feminist research is interdisciplinary. Yet there are very few books in the social sciences and humanities that address the methodological and theoretical issues raised in doing feminist research from an interdisciplinary perspective. This collection is an ideal text for courses in research methods and in women's studies in a wide range of social science and humanities disciplines. A distinct feature of this volume is its interdisciplinary and global orientation. The collection is organized around key issues in feminist theory and empirical research as they have been impacted by post-structuralist dialogue. Several essays address the tensions between disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge building, exposing male biases embedded in disciplinary paradigms. Other essays deal with the politics of identity and experience, presented not as innate and unproblematic, but as constituted by discourse, representation, and the effects of power. Responding to the inadequacy of essentializing modes of feminist thought, some scholars focus on the complex terrain in which difference is used as a tool of oppression and of resistance both inside and outside feminist praxis. The gender dynamics of power and resistance are taken up by several critics whose research encourages the development of a feminist scholarly methodology focused on women's subjective experiences and the ways in which relations of power are mediated. Visual and discursive representations of the female body constitute another major focus of the volume, especially as related to the imposition of compulsory heterosexuality and reproductive norms. The volume concludes with a set of essays which present the reader with some methodological and political dilemmas feminists encounter as they expose the underlying ideological distortions in existing social policies.

This text comprises 13 key essays focusing on colonial writing, covering topics such as the decolonisation of African literature, literary studies and British rule in India, language of class and the ideologies of immigration.

The history of the second wave of feminism in the United States demonstrates the potential for both serious social change and seemingly intractable divisions among women. Race, ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation, and religion have all been dividing influences among women, shaping their various perspectives on and relations to the women's movement. Yet collectively, women's efforts--identified as second wave feminism--are seen as having made a difference. This book highlights the lives and work of fifty second wave feminists, women who have served as catalysts in the developing feminist movement. A diverse group--playwrights and politicians, grassroots organizers and scientists, poets and theologians--they provide the reader with compelling stories of individual women's lives, collective feminist struggles, and the possibilities of feminist social change.

Keynote: A lively collection of short, original interviews with leading thinkers

On its twentieth anniversary, the South End Press collective has gathered the left's most prominent intellectuals for a wide-ranging discussion of the past twenty years and the next twenty years of progressive social movements in the United States.

In 7 accessible, personal interviews, Zinn et al let readers know their most deeply held beliefs and hopes for the progressive movements they have led and nurtured over the last 2 decades.

Every one who would like to see a revitalized, more effective movement for social change in the United States whether feminist, anti-racist, populist, anarchist, socialist, union activist, or unsure will want to read Talking About a Revolution.