Bell Hooks, Talking Back, and Female Writers - Book Report/Review Example

Bell Hooks, Talking Back and Female One of the primary messages in Bell Hooks' essay "Talking Back" is the concept that talking back or responding in any way other than submission to authority figures meant she was daring to disagree or express an opinion as if she were an equal to the person she is talking with. This was always considered inappropriate because she was a woman and women were not supposed to have any authority. This idea is seen in many of the things we've read this semester as it is expressed by several female authors including Bell Hooks, Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks and Kate Chopin. Bell Hooks starts off the discussion by blatantly writing about women's lack of authority and the attitudes she faced every time she tried to express her ideas. She says, "had I been a boy, they might have encouraged me to speak believing that I might someday be called to preach," but because she was a girl she was supposed to just stay quiet and accept what she was told. Women's speech, she says, was reduced to just "giving orders [within the home], making threats [that had no weight] and fussing [which was ignored]." Since she couldn't express what was on her mind in verbal speech, she turned to writing as a means of getting her ideas out. This opened her up to harsh criticism by her community once it was discovered, but it also sent the message out to other women that their ideas were not necessarily worthless just because they were women and it helped to expose the degree to which women were being subjugated by their own society. These ideas of subjugation and a need to express the self can also be found in the work of Kate Chopin. In her short story "The Story of an Hour," she introduces the main character as a very sickly young woman who has just been told that her husband died in a train crash. When she gets alone in her bedroom, she starts to celebrate her newfound freedom and her blood begins to flow. “There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature.” The story sends the message that women were being unnaturally suppressed by their societies, men and other women, and that this was very bad for their health. It also attempts to reveal the idea that the ability to 'talk back' is a necessary part of feeling human and alive. In her poem "Still I Rise," Maya Angelou defies this tradition of subjugation and affirms her right and her need to keep talking back. In the poem, she celebrates her independence of spirit in the face of a harsh, judgmental world determined to keep her in a predetermined place. Instead of behaving as she’s supposed to - as society has decided she should - she behaves as she wishes and maintains pride in herself. She acknowledges the cultural attitude that Hooks talks about, but she defies it when she says, "You may shoot me with your words, / You may cut me with your eyes, / you may kill me with your hatefulness, / But still, like air, I'll rise.” (21-24). Like Hooks, she is defiant in asserting her right to talk back even though the society around her is constantly trying to get her to be quiet. Like Chopin, she has experienced the various ways in which that society attempts to keep her in her place, she has had to struggle and face hardships intended to make her feel bad about herself and to reject her own abilities in deference to others. Like Chopin's character and like Hooks, she embraces her ability to talk back and uses its power to try to educate and empower her audience. Gwendolyn Brooks shows the reason why women need to have the ability to talk back in her poem "The Mother." Brooks manages to portray both the anguish of the would-be mother in making and then living with the decisions she’s made as well as the necessity of making those same choices and the ability to accept them as her own. The woman in the poem has had to give up her children to abortion because she knew she would be unable to support them on her own in a society that both punished young women for being single mothers and refused to give black women a fair chance to make a living wage. “Believe me, I loved you all. / Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you / All” (30-33). The way she repeats herself conveys a sense of agony that she cannot demonstrate her love for them in any other way than to relieve them of the hardships and tortures they would have experienced as poor black children in the American ghetto. The poem allows the mother to express some of her anguish and doubts, to explore her own feelings and to share with others what the experience of abortion does for the individual who makes that choice. She doesn't condemn or condone, simply expresses her feelings and makes it clear that this type of expression is necessary in the world. Her 'talking back' is a means of sharing the woman's point of view regarding the issue which is important because it is only the woman's point of view that matters on this issue. All of these writers have used their voices as a means of talking back to their societies in order to assert that the woman's voice is important and has meaning. Although they have all been told to be quiet in one way or another, they all express the concept that subjugating the female voice is unhealthy and unwise. Women have important things to say, important perspectives that are left out of the conversation when they are silenced and can bring about important change in the world. They also send out the message that no matter what kind of difficulties are thrown in their way, the need to express the self is so fundamental to being human that it can never be fully suppressed. Women will always find a way to be heard. Works Cited Angelou, Maya. “Still I Rise”. The Poetry of Maya Angelou. New York: Random House, 1993. 163-64. Print. Brooks, Gwendolyn. "The Mother.” The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry. 3rd Ed. Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann & Robert O’Clair (eds.). New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003: 145. Print. Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” (1897). Printed in Mercury Reader. Melanie Rubens. Boston, MA: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2007. Print. Hooks, Bell. "Talking Back." Read More