Understanding marginality as position and place of resistance is crucial for oppressed, exploited, colonized people. – Marginality As a Site of Resistance, 1990 In fact I was saying just the opposite: that it is also the site of radical possibility, a space of resistance. Marginality much more than a site of deprivation. – Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, 2000 On racism and white supremacy: We continue to put in place the anti-sexist thinking and practice which affirms the reality that females can achieve self-actualization and success without dominating one another.”

– Remembered Rapture: The Writer At Work, 1999 Indeed, no woman writer can write ‘too much’ … No woman has ever written enough.” No Black woman writer in this culture can write ‘too much’. – Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, 2000 If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency. – Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism, 1981 It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation I choose to re-appropriate the term ‘feminism’, to focus on the fact that to be ‘feminist’ in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression. – Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, 2003 On feminism: Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community. – Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, 2003ĭominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination. – Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations, 1994 On community: The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. – Communion: The Search for Female Love, 2002īut many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin. The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself.

Bell hooks teaching books