Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics Book

I suspect that this would be a tricky book to review at the best of times - and these are not the best of times for trying to appraise a radical black feminist writer talking about the system of white supremacy in the post-Civil-Rights United States of America. I recall that I purchased this book for a class around the time it was published, but didn't wind up reading it until five or six years later (I think it wound up dropped from the class for time, not that I failed to do the assigned reading, but I can't remember now). When I did read it, what I recall striking me was her descriptions of the "beautiful chocolate faces" of her family that appeared in some of the semi-autobiographical reflections. So far as I can recall, I had never seen non-white faces described with such affection, even in the writings of black authors, and that made an argument more powerful than some of her most articulate statements about the nature of racism in American culture.

This may also have been one of the first heavily theoretical postmodernist texts I read, and although it certainly confused me at times, I would have to say that it made a good introduction because hooks is always careful to link the theoretical approach she takes to practical solutions and the real lives of people. She brings herself to the text in a very profound way, as the above observations would suggest, always foregrounding her lived experiences in her analysis, and arguing that these "subjective biases" are precisely what gives her insights their validity. As such, it is inevitable that readers will disagree with at least some of what she says, but they will also have a chance to learn from the processes, especially about their own biases and lived experiences.

This book probably deserves a more careful re-read than I gave it in preparation for this review, but I will close by saying that each page I looked at was a delightful experience of re-discovery, that there are many things I had forgotten, and that the book contains the gamut of emotions for me, but first and foremost communicates the yearning of people to be allowed to be themselves without fear or shame.