Safety, acceptance, and freedom are three things that every person wants to feel. Where is the place that makes someone feel these things? Bell hooks expands our minds and provides us with an idea of such a place that would provide individuals with a sense of safety, acceptance, and freedom. She calls these hope filled settings “homeplaces.” In hooks piece, “Homeplace: A Site of Resistance,” she describes not only what a homeplace is, but also what the people who were involved in the homeplace endured and overcame. Hooks makes it clear that the hardships black women overcame, and the legacies they left behind are tremendously significant. Because of hooks personal and family’s experiences, her piece focuses on African American women , but clearly her understandings and principles also describe many other minorities as well as women in general. Women of all races, ethnicities, and religions have made leaps and bounds in positively impacting the world, and they will certainly not back down now. Hooks describes a homeplace as a place where one could resist, foster his or her spirit, grow, and develop with the support of others. This place could be someone’s home, a home of a friend, or really anywhere where people could congregate and feel safe. An important characteristic of a homeplace in the African American community was that they were free …show more content…
It easy to see that the world is far from perfect. There is still racism and other prejudices that plague the world every day; the purpose of homeplaces is to create a sense of unity as well as a place to resist oppression. Hooks, obviously, is an advocate for the homeplace, and it is easy to see why. Homeplaces bring people together. They create a sense of family within a community, and they are for anybody and everybody. Homeplaces are not limited to one group of people, and anyone can start a homeplace because everyone deserves to have a safe
McGuire, Danielle L. At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance- A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power. New York, New York: Vintage Books. 2011.
The black women’s interaction with her oppressive environment during Revolutionary period or the antebellum America was the only way of her survival. Playing her role, and being part of her community that is not always pleasant takes a lot of courage, and optimism for better tomorrow. The autonomy of a slave women still existed even if most of her natural rights were taken. As opposed to her counterparts
Barbara Morrison, an educated woman who grew up in a nuclear family home, their home included “[her] parents and children living in one household” (Moore& Asay, 2013). They lived in Roland Park in Baltimore Maryland. Living the “Average” lifestyle in her parents’ home she felt as if she were an outsider. Morrison decided to go to Western Maryland and pursue her collegiate education. She could not take the racism that went on in 1970 and decided to uproot her life for the better. Worcester, Massachusetts is where Morrison’s life would further take its course, she finally felt at home in this city. Morrison met her closest friend Jill who would also be an important benefactor in Barbra’s life; the first thing that she explained to Morrison was “The vast majority of people on welfare were white and lived in rural areas, not inner cities” (Morrison,2011).Morrison did not understand this until she was faced with the reality of poverty. In order to survive she needed to bring in resources, which are “anything identified to meet an existing or future need” (Moore& Asay, 2013).In Morrison’s case ...
Often times in the black community we like to avoid talking about topics that effect us because of the fear of “scaring the community”. Hooks shows the readers of Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery that we shouldn’t be worried about scaring the community and we need to inform the community to prevent them from being ignorant of the issues that are prevelant in the black community. This book allowed me to open my eyes to the issues that all African American women are facing on a day-to-day
This is the normality of life. In Chapter 1: Suppose They Don’t Want Us Here, Simmons contends this of black girls’ survival during this era which depended upon the development of mental maps of their environments, and the ways in which they needed to maneuver in certain neighborhoods while differentiating what was associated with them and what was not. Anyone born into this world enters with no choice of habitat or footing in which they will live their lives, Simmons demonstrates this through exploring black girls’ public and private realities described as the “double bind” of being black and female. “During Jim Crow, mental maps provided “imaginative order” to black girls’ worlds and helped them form a growing “awareness of racialized space” (p.55). These mental maps helped declare the racial and gender distinction in New Orleans as well as force young black girls to really comprehend their surroundings and themselves within this rigid space. The girls’ sense of individuality, role, and capability was constantly changing in reflection of their substantial position in the city at a given time. “Before I was ten I knew what it was to stay off the sidewalk to let a white man pass; otherwise he might knock me off” (p.57) Black girls had to foster resilience and elasticity in their role in order to not be harassed or reach conflict. This was expected of black girls to adjust their behavior as planned based on the interactions and people they cross paths with. “She learned where her body belonged in relationship to whites, whether they were men or boys” (p.58) This chapter shows how physical space has constructed women/girls mental maps and analyzes the perspective of space in which they were functioning in. Black women would suffer insults from both white and black men which lead to further arrangements of their
The hour long lecture of Bell Hooks and Cornel West deemed to be one of the most informative lectures over the culture of African Americans I have listened to. It was not only amazingly informative, but Hooks and West touched on many subjects that we have already covered and are currently learning in class. These subjects include transgression, white supremacy, patriarchy, consciousness, racialized sexism, and what is very relevant in today 's current society, the privilege of whites in America. I would also like to mention that their lecture was intriguing mainly due to their close relationship with one another. This relationship provided comic relief and both professors were able to work together to provide different viewpoints on certain ideas, yet they were able to agree with each other on many of them as well. Because Hooks and West previewed many ideas and subjects that we have introduced in class, I would like to focus on their three major subjects; social
Bell hooks knows about the challenges of race and class, and why some people have a harder time than others in achieving the American Dream. It is normal to feel uncomfortable and awkward arriving at a new school for the first time, but this was something completely different. For bell hooks, walking through the halls with eyes staring at her as if she was an alien, she realized that schooling for her would never be the same. She describes her feelings of inequality a...
hooks talks about the idea that arose from black women attempting to achieve something in their American patriarchal society and how they became single mothers who took care of the children and supported themselves economically. Many historians and philosophers have referred to this attempt as a period when a matriarchy was forming in the black community. hooks explains that a matriarch is not simply when there is no man in the household, but when the woman is economically secure. The economic situation of women, especially black, hooks argues, has never been secure in the United States. These black women were forced to acquire very low-wage jobs when they either had no husband or the husbands refused to work at this low-wage job because it
“Home” is different for anyone you ask, it could be the feeling of something, or a specific physical place, but no matter what you call it, it is a place that makes you feel safe and secure. That is exactly what Eagle Pass is to Maria Cortinas. When people think of Eagle Pass, Texas if they do they don’t think much of it because it is a small town that not many people are familiar with. It isn’t a place that gets talked about in the master narrative of Texas, generally because it is small and doesn’t have much going on. Even though she travelled to many other places that are both bigger and have a lot more to offer than Eagle Pass it is a place Maria loves and will always hold dear to her heart.
The setting for this interview with Mamie McFadden was done in her home at 10786 S. Peoria, Chicago, Illinois. The house is a brick cottage with a concrete based metal rail porch. Mrs. McFadden welcomed me at the door and mentioned that her cleaning lady had recently departed and that she was excited to do this interview. Walking in the door at 12:30 in the afternoon, I was greeted with the aroma of cooking cabbage from the rear kitchen area. The living room, where the interview would take place, appeared to stop in time. There was no doubt that this home was decorated in the prime of her life during the 1970s. The orange plastered walls contrasted with the crème ceiling, along with the square tiled mirrors on the south wall, took me back to the days when I was a little boy and my aunt had a similar styled living room. It occurred to me that most African American women, not only share a sisterhood in trials and tribulations, but also in taste and decorations.
Women, black women in particular, are placed in a society that marginalizes and controls many of the aspects of a black woman’s life. As a result, many black women do not see a source of opportunity, a way to escape the drudgery of their everyday existence. For example, if we were to ask black mother’s if they would change their situation if it became possible for them to do so, many would change, but others would say that it is not possible; This answer would be the result of living in a society that has conditioned black women to accept their lots in life instead of fighting against the system of white and male dominated supremacy. In Ann Petry’s The Street, we are given a view of a black mother who is struggling to escape what the street symbolizes.
Most people define home as a comfortable setting which provides love and warmth. In Scott Sanders “Homeplace” and Richard Ford’s “I Must Be Going” the concept of home is defined in two different ways. Sanders believes that by moving from place to place, the meaning of home has been diminished. Sanders believes that America’s culture “nudges everyone into motion” (Sanders 103) and that his “longing to become an inhabitant rather than a drifter” (103) is what sets him apart from everyone else. Ford prefers to stay on the move. His argument is life’s too short to settle in one place. He believes home is where you make it, but permanence is not a requirement.
bell Hooks learns that even thought her family doesn't have the money for her to study she had to find a way to study and pay for her classes, books, and, material for the class. She gave examples of how the African Americans underclass was discriminated and how Television shows would show a different side to the "underclass."
Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi is a narrated autobiography depicting what it was like to grow up in the South as a poor African American female. Her autobiography takes us through her life journey beginning with her at the age of four all the way through to her adult years and her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. The book is divided into four periods: Childhood, High School, College and The Movement. Each of these periods represents the process by which she “came of age” with each stage and its experiences having an effect on her enlightenment. She illustrates how important the Civil Rights Movement was by detailing the economic, social, and racial injustices against African Americans she experienced.
Different environments influence the way we think in many ways. In Bell Hooks “Keeping Close to Home” she reflects on challenges she encountered. Her parents along with other parents from the neighborhood in which she grew up in feared their kids going off to college because it would change them. Being African American in college, based on social, and economics, her academic classifications were powerfully influenced by the environment in which she found herself living in. Although, Hooks often found herself needing more money she never needed a new set of beliefs.