May 2012
118 posts
“I am passionate about everything in my life—first and foremost, passionate about ideas. And that’s a dangerous person to be in this society, not just because I’m a woman, but because it’s such a fundamentally anti-intellectual, anti-critical thinking society.”
—bell hooks (via vegetable)
“One of the biggest myths about black male-and-female relationships that abounds in this nation is that black women are powerful matriarchs who do not submit to the will of their men. In actuality most black women have bene more than willing to surrender control over their hard-earned resources to the men in their lives: fathers, brothers, lovers, and husbands. No wonder, then, that at the very onset of the feminist movement when national surveys were conducted to determine how groups of men felt about women working, black men were always more accepting and supportive of women working outside the home than other groups.”
—
bell hooks in We Real Cool, p. 120
[the conundrum of how ‘black solidarity’ is usually viewed as being impeded by black females… as black females are too “independent” when in actuality, we are the most “down” for our men than a lot of other demographics]
(via daniellemertina)
“If black women were raped in slavery it was because they were licentious and seductive, or so white men told themselves. If white men had an unusual obsession with black male genitalia it was because they had to understand the sexual primitive, the demonic beast in their midst. And if during lynching they touched burnt flesh, exposed private parts, and cut off bits and pieces of black male bodies, white folks saw this ritualistic sacrifice in no way a commentary on their obsession with black bodies, naked flesh, sexuality. (It is useful to remember the lynching of black folks escalated when slavery ended.) So much ritual sexualized torture of the black body indicates the intensity of both white hatred of black bodies and their longing to consume those bodies in a symbolic sexualized cannibalism.”
—bell hooks in We Real Cool, p. 68 (via daniellemertina)
“Oftentimes the sexism in black communities, though intense, is so common that no one takes violence against females seriously. Violent actions by a black male may be explained as his response to racism and economic oppression (if that were the case black women would be gunning each other down and being equally violent to black males)… Whatever the roots of black male rage, it is sexist thinking and practice that teaches them that it is acceptable to express that rage violently.”
—
bell hooks in We Real Cool
[pg 62]
(via daniellemertina)
“Male violence is a central problem in our society. Black male violence simply mirrors the styles and habits of white male violence. It is not unique. What is unique to black male experience is the way in which acting violently often gets both attention and praise from the dominant culture. Even as it is being condemned black male violence is often deified. As Orlando Patterson suggests, as long as white males can deflect attention from their own brutal violence onto black males, black boys and men will receive contradictory messages about what is manly, about what is acceptable.”
—
bell hooks in We Real Cool
[pg 66]
(via daniellemertina)
“
Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body…
Love is none of that. There is nothing in nature like it… Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God.
You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn — by practice and careful contemplation — the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it. Which is to say you have to earn God. You have to practice God. You have to think God — carefully. And if you are a good and diligent student you may secure the right to show love. Love is not a gift. It is a diploma. A diploma conferring certain privileges: the privilege of expressing love and the privilege of receiving it.
How do you know you have graduated? You don’t. What you do know is that you are human and therefore educable, and therefore capable of learning how to learn, and therefore interesting to God, who is interested only in Himself which is to say He is interested only in love. Do you understand me? God is not interested in you. He is interested in love and the bliss it brings to those who understand and share that interest.
” — Paradise by Toni Morrison (pg 141)
“Being with men who were not interested in offering abiding closeness meant that I never really had to be close. Yet I could have an image of myself as this open, giving woman who really desired closeness, at times feeling smug because I worked so hard on the ‘relationship.’ Working to be close with someone who is not interested in sustained closeness not only depresses the spirit, it makes you a perfect target for aggression. […]
Many women who are warm and openhearted choose men who are closed and shut down because we hope we can provide a catalyst for them to open up. Our efforts usually fail, because these men have not made their own commitment to being more open. Trained to be nurturers and caregivers, women often think we are behaving as we should - doing what we have been socialized to believe is a woman’s job. We may even experience the constant tension between these two different value systems - a man who has chosen to avoid intimacy and a woman who desires intimacy - as stimulating. Importantly, though, this unfulfilling work keeps us from the real work of intimacy.
” —bell hooks, Communion: the Female Search for Love (via puzzledpantherrr)
leonine antiheroine: queer black women fiction →
leonineantiheroine.tumblr.com
- Leave of Absence by S. Renee Bess
- Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez
- Don’t Explain by Jewelle Gomez
- The Necessary Hunger by Nina Revoyr
- The Heart Does Not Bend by Makeda Silvera
- Pieces of My Heart: A Lesbian of Color Anthology by Makeda Silvera
“This glorious myth, the tale of Isis and Osiris, reminds us
that no matter how broken, how lost we are, we can be found.
Our wounded souls are never beyond repair. Black females and
males can use this myth to nurture the memory of sustained
connection with one another, of a love that has stood and can
stand the test of time and tribulation. We can choose a love
that will courageously seek out the wounded soul, find you,
and dare to bring you home again, doing what must be done to
help put the bits and pieces together again, to make us whole.
This is real cool. This is real love.” —Bell Hooks - We Real Cool (via madriche)
that no matter how broken, how lost we are, we can be found.
Our wounded souls are never beyond repair. Black females and
males can use this myth to nurture the memory of sustained
connection with one another, of a love that has stood and can
stand the test of time and tribulation. We can choose a love
that will courageously seek out the wounded soul, find you,
and dare to bring you home again, doing what must be done to
help put the bits and pieces together again, to make us whole.
This is real cool. This is real love.” —Bell Hooks - We Real Cool (via madriche)
“When I counter this demonization of black males by insisting that gangsta rap does not appear in a cultural vacuum that it is not a product created in isolation within a segregated black world but is rather expressive of the cultural crossing, mixings, and engagement of black youth culture with the values, attitudes, and concerns of the white majority, some folks stop listening.
The sexist, misogynist, patriarchal ways of thinking and behaving that are glorified in gangsta rap are a reflection of the prevailing values in our society, values created and sustained by white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. As the crudest and most brutal expression of sexism misogynistic attitudes tend to be portrayed by the dominant culture as always an expression of male deviance. In reality, they are part of a sexist continuum, necessary for the maintenance of patriarchal social order.” —bell hooks,”Gangsta Culture - Sexism and Misogyny: Who will take the rap?” (via wretchedoftheearth)
The sexist, misogynist, patriarchal ways of thinking and behaving that are glorified in gangsta rap are a reflection of the prevailing values in our society, values created and sustained by white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. As the crudest and most brutal expression of sexism misogynistic attitudes tend to be portrayed by the dominant culture as always an expression of male deviance. In reality, they are part of a sexist continuum, necessary for the maintenance of patriarchal social order.” —bell hooks,”Gangsta Culture - Sexism and Misogyny: Who will take the rap?” (via wretchedoftheearth)
“In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.”
—audre lorde. (via venusessetpuer)
“As more people of color raise our consciousness and refuse to be pitted against one another, the forces of neo-colonial white supremacist domination must work harder to divide and conquer.”
—bell hooks (via brwnmarimacha)
