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You, like many people (me, anyway), might be a little frightened of bell hooks, and understandably so. Hooks is going to yell at you. Well, okay, there I go enforcing racist, sexist stereotypes of strong black women: of course she's not actually going to yell, but she is also not going to go too gentle. Hooks is going to let you know straight up what the problem is, and part of that problem is you. She is going to call you and your imperialist white-supremacist capitalist sexist society on all of your shit, and she's likely going to get you feeling very uncomfortable about any number of of terrible things you probably didn't even realize you were doing or thinking. And she's going to do all this in a way that might be fairly unpleasant, in a form you're not that comfortable with. There won't be any footnotes (there's not even a BIBILIOGRAPHY, though hooks cites many works [is that even legal???!!!]), and hooks will often make sweeping statements and very provocative generalizations without citing any hard evidence for her point of view. You might get defensive and stop listening, or you might feel chastised and guilty and just accept that you're a privileged jerk, and stop really thinking critically about what she's saying and hoping if you just nod enthusiastically and say something nice about how smart and right she is about everything, that maybe she'll stop being mad at you and let you off the hook (hah hah hah, hilarious pun totally intended). This applies not only if you're a straight white man who runs an oil drilling project in Nigeria or develops luxury real estate in "upcoming neighborhoods": IMO no matter who you are and which boxes you happen to check on the census form, if you're paying attention hooks is eventually going to hit something pretty personal in you, and you're going to feel it. And also, she's going to carry on quite a bit about how screwed up things in the world are. Even if -- hell, especially if -- you've already noticed that, you might get a bit tired of hearing her repeat it.

For all these reasons, if you read just half of what bell hooks is saying and then stop listening, it could be real tempting to throw up your hands and shout, "It's all such a mess! White supremacy! Patriarchy! Everyone's mad at me and things are so screwed up no matter what I do, so why even bother?! I'm gonna go Netflix a South Park and some really offensive interracial porn and just call it a day."

And honestly, that'd be a shame, because the thing is that hooks is NOT just complaining about bad we all are and how screwed up everything is. Not at all! First she describes the problems, and then she provides clear and concrete solutions, and that, my friend, is a beautiful thing. Hooks -- especially, I think, more recent hooks -- is all about LOVE. Love! Didn't you get her memo? Love and healing and all that sweet and softy stuff! Not mean or scary or hopeless at all; in fact, quite the opposite! And for me, that's kind of what was most interesting about my own reaction to this book. Some of my Booksters already know that I'm a social worker, and that I also really hate reading about psychology and am not at all a self-helpy, therapyish type of girl, perhaps to a rather surprising degree given my chosen profession. So in way, it's sort of surprising to me that I wound up liking what's essentially a self-help book for black men. But I did mostly like it, probably because hooks arrives at the personal place that she does via a deeply political route, and also because as a white social worker who's worked predominantly with black male clients, I found her approach and conclusions really resonated with many of my own observations, and gave me some context I did not otherwise have.

Being neither black nor male, I'm not in the best position either to support or refute many of hooks's assertions in this book. Basically, her starting point is this very common refrain we've all heard about the various crises of black men in America. Hooks is calling bullshit on the popular exhortation that many black men need to clean up their acts and become better patriarchs. Patriarchy isn't the solution, hooks says: it's the goddamn problem, and here's why, and here's what to do about it. And then she tells you! God, I love that. I am so, so sick of people complaining about things without coming up with any actual solutions, and hooks doesn't do that at ALL. Here's what needs to be done, she says, and here's how to do it. Step by step. Here. Like this. I love that!

For me, the second half of this book was stronger than the first. Hooks articulates some very crucial points about black male sexuality, violence, and parenting that are perhaps not exactly revelatory but which I'd never been able to think about myself this coherently. I really do agree with a lot of what she says about how patriarchy hurts men, and how the intersectionality of race and gender creates very special problems for a lot of black men. It's not like I never noticed any of this stuff before -- I probably think about it more than most people -- but hooks gives a good framework that really ties the macro-level racism and patriarchy stuff to the personal experience and psychological impact of these forces on individuals. I often find this connection between the political and personal realms a bit of a black box, and its mechanism is one hooks seems to understand and explain better than most other writers. Maybe that's partly because of this same form that I find so frustrating: her observations usually aren't based in hard evidence, just in her personal experiences and observations, and things (often memoirs) that she's read. This book is mostly just someone who's thought very deeply about these questions sharing her insights, which is probably what makes reading hooks both especially difficult and so rewarding for me. It drives me crazy that there are no endnotes and no bibliography, but the way hooks so frankly and disarmingly reveals personal experiences from her family and romantic life is much of what makes her writing so truthful and real.


In light of our recent Jack Kerouac/"cool" brawl on here, I must note that hooks does quote Kerouac directly (and non-judgmentally) in reference to "his fascination with black male cool." She also delineates her own theory of cool, which I personally found excellent:

Once upon a time black male "cool" was defined by the ways in which black men confronted the hardships of life without allowing their spirits to be ravaged. They took the pain of it used it alchemically to turn the pain into gold. That burning process required high heat. Black male cool was defined by the ability to withstand the heat and remain centered. It was defined by black male willingness to confront reality, to face the truth, and bear it by not adopting a false pose of cool by feeding on fantasy; not by black male denial or by assuming a "poor me" victim identity. It was defined by individual black males daring to self-define rather than be defined by others (p. 147).