Where We Stand: Class Matters / Edition 1

by bell hooks

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415929134
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/04/2000
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	532,222
Product dimensions:	5.62(w) x 10.88(h) x 0.43(d)

About the Author

Bell Hooks has published three books with Routledge: Teaching to Transgress, Reel to Reel, and Outlaw Culture. Her most recent publications are All About Love and her children's book Happy to Be Nappy.

Table of Contents

introduction Class Matters; Chapter 1 Making the Personal Political: Class in the Family; Chapter 2 Coming to Class Consciousness; Chapter 3 Class and the Politics of Living Simply; Chapter 4 Money Hungry; Chapter 5 The Politics of Greed; Chapter 6 Being Rich; Chapter 7 The Me-Me Class: The Young and the Ruthless; Chapter 8 Class and Race: The New Black Elite; Chapter 9 Feminism and Class Power; Chapter 10 White Poverty: The Politics of Invisibility; Chapter 11 Solidarity with the Poor; Chapter 12 Class Claims: Real Estate Racism; Chapter 13 Crossing Class Boundaries; Chapter 14 Living without Class Hierarchy;

Editorial Reviews

"Where We Stand: Class Matters is a statement of self, reaching through all of those selves who think properly on class, to embrace a society transformed by redistribution...hooks moves analytically to grasp what so many theorists of our time have evaded." -- LiteraryReview of Canada
"hooks's story is both inspiration and cautionary tale." -- Washington Post
"hooks delves into the deep divisions of class, socio-economics, and race that are too often lightly stepped around and avoided and brings them out, lays them on the table, and helps us bravely through the pieces and make sense of them." -- Black Issues Book Review
"hooks is often refreshing simply because she says so clearly what she really means. No academic rigamarole or mystical jargon for her. The good news is that such occasionally awkward phrases...are sometimes preludes to her seamless depictions of the complex cultural nuances that make up contemporary American culture." -- TheWashington Post Book World
"This incisive examination of class is rooted in cultural critic hooks personal experience, political commitment, and social theory, which links gender, race, and class. Starting with her working-class childhood, the author illustrates how everyday interactions reproduce class hierarchy while simultaneously denying its existence. Because she sustains an unflinching gaze on both her own personal motivations and on persistent social structures, hooks provides a valuable framework for discussing such difficult and unexplored areas as greed, the quest to live simply, the ruling-class co-optation of youth through popular culture, and real estate speculation as an instrument of racism." -- Library Journal
"[A]n engaging, thought-provoking memoir." -- BostonHerald
"In often-evocative prose, bell hooks utilizes her own life to quickly 'get to the heart of matters, ' developing insights and pithy truths that resonate long after her books are put down. Where We Stand is a deeply felt rendering that engages us through descriptions of her childhood and her process of coming to class awareness." -- NSWA Journal

From the Publisher

Bookseller Reviews

Bell hooks likes to quote her Kentucky mother's adage, "Life is not promised," a statement that seems to anticipate the urgency of her own work. Hook's perceptive and increasingly sensitive studies of cultural nuance continues in this collection of essays.

Barnes & Noble, Inc.

This incisive examination of class is rooted in cultural critic hooks's (All About Love) personal experience, political commitment, and social theory, which links gender, race, and class. Starting with her working-class childhood, the author illustrates how everyday interactions reproduce class hierarchy while simultaneously denying its existence. Because she sustains an unflinching gaze on both her own personal motivations and on persistent social structures, hooks provides a valuable framework for discussing such difficult and unexplored areas as greed, the quest to live simply, the ruling-class co-optation of youth through popular culture, and real estate speculation as an instrument of racism. Although the reading level and the price are both steep, this title is highly recommended for most public libraries and academic social science collections.--Paula R. Dempsey, DePaul Univ. Lib., Chicago Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Drawing on her roots in Kentucky and her adventures with Manhattan co- op boards, bell hooks, one of America's most admired critics and writers, provides a successful black woman's reflection on how our dilemmas of class and race are intertwined and how we can find ways to think beyond them. hooks is author of many books. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews