This volume brings together ten essays in the development of black feminism. The selections reflect the literary, social and political critiques that mark this form of feminist and antiracist thought as unique and transformative.
It is one of the essential texts in the field of women′s studies. This text brings together ten insightful essays in the development of black feminism. On the backdrop of feminism and anti-racism, the literary, social and political critical reviews are reflected in a unique way.
Patricia Hill Collins sets out to provide an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, Bell Hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. Black feminism remains imperative because U.S. Black women create an oppressed group and majorly, U.S. Black women participate in a dialectical association connecting African American women's oppression and activism. Such dialectical associations indicate that there exist two
…show more content…
The distinguishing feature of her overall rejection of western binary thought is that Collins declines to detach theory from everyday practical experience; she also rubbishes positivism’s requirements of isolating the subject (the researcher) from the object (the researched), firmly situating herself within her project as both an academic and an African-American woman. Her refusal to isolate the intellectual from the everyday practical is also apparent in the materials that she scans: extracts from slaves’ and domestic workers’ accounts of their lives and the lyrics of Black women blues singers and hip-hop artists are considered alongside iconic Black feminist thinkers viz. Audre Lorde, Bell Hooks, Angela Davis and novelists like Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker etc. This has given wings to Collins to magnify the canon of Black feminist thought and to stretch traditional understandings of the term