Talking Back by Bell Hooks - Book Report/Review Example

Explain why you believe "Talking Back" by Bell Hooks is the best representative of the topic Endangering Language, Silence and Voice In'Talking Back, hooks investigates feminist theory in an accessible style and grounds her discussion in personal testimony. Essays discuss homophobia, everyday feminism, the portrayal of women in films, autobiography, and Black women writers. 'Talking Back' renders the readers with an intellectually appealing view of the world through the eyes of a mature black woman.

According to her, in the 'old school', children were meant to be seen and not heard. To make yourself heard if you were a child was to invite punishment. In 'Talking Back' bell Hooks describes how she helps her students find their voice within her classroom. She discusses her use of authority to enable her students. For her, teacher authority is a necessary part of helping her students find their voices. Writing is a healing act of power for this woman who grew up in an "old school" Southern black world where children were meant to be seen and not heard.

"Talking Back" was punished with silence. But in the world of woman-talk, where the everyday rules of how to live and how to act were established, hooks made language her birthright. When it comes to bigotry, there are no mincing words; bell hooks talks back. Right to speak is a requisite part of claiming a self. As bell hooks asserts, "moving from silence into speech is for the oppressed, the colonized, the exploited, and those who stand and struggle side by side a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes new life and'growth possible.

It is that act of speech of 'talking back,' that is no mere gesture of empty words that is the expression of moving from object to subject-the liberated voice." When it comes to language, she asserts that language'is a crucial issue for folk whose movement outside the boundaries of poor and working-class backgrounds changes the nature and direction of their speech. Language reflects the culture from which we emerge. To deny ourselves daily use of speech patterns that are common and familiar, is one of the ways we become estranged from our past.

Bell Hooks shows that contemporary feminist thought is often grounded in white racism. Further, she engages in considering new ways to think about our relationship to language. Silence needs to be transformed in to language. Yet speaking from and into silence is an act that seems fraught with danger: a revolutionary act. This is the point echoed by Bell Hooks. She searches for a world of woman-talk in 'Talking back' Hooks Says it is a mistake to think that women do not have a language of their own.

In Black communities, she says, women have not been silent However, rich as their woman-talk is, it is a private talk, intimate and intense, a talk between mothers and sisters and women friends. It is the right to public speech that is denied to women, the right to be taken seriously, to be even heard. Hooks also demonstrates how language can be and is used to oppress and dominate. And yet, she says, the oppresses can use this language, which needs to be "possessed, taken, claimed as space of resistance".

Hooks has claimed that although women have not been silent, their talk is limited to women-talk and they are not granted right to public speech. Whereas language is used for oppressing and dominating. She asserts that silence needs to be transformed into language which would provide them with their space of resistance. Although hooks was supposed to become a quiet, well-behaved young woman, she became instead a woman who "talked back." Bell Hooks has demonstrated problems endangering Language, Silence and Voice.

She attempts development of a strong sense of self that allows black women to speak out against racism and sexism. Thus, I feel "Talking Back" by Bell Hooks is the best representative of the topic Endangering Language, Silence and Voice. Works Cited Hooks, Bell. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Cambridge: South End Press, 1989. Brewer, F. Mary. Exclusions in Feminist Thought: Challenging the Boundaries of Womanhood. United Kingdom: Sussex Academic Press, 2002.