Summary Of Patricia Hill Collins 'Black Feminist Thought'

Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins is a diamond in the heart of dullness in terms of Black feminist writings from the past. It clearly breaks down the hypocrisy operated under conventional i.e. ‘White’ feminism with respect to black women and also inclusive of civil rights movement’s false virtue. This piece of literature has made a standard mark for Black feminism in contemporary times. Without any difficulty, the text articulates the lives of black women and their experiences in the racist and sexist society. With this, Collins try to trigger reader’s mind so as to initiate thought process.

Compilation of ten essays in a unique and transformative manner is what sets the book climb on a different stature. Usage of language and

To create such a picture, she uses her skills of using historical anecdotes combining her argument to justify black feminist’s approach. The book clearly touches upon the intersectional experience of race and gender, also emphasizing on sexual politics in love and relationships of black women: black motherhood, the activism of black feminist. Not just this, but the book also talks about the basic usage of transversal politics and also creation of self-referential form of epistemology that acts as a defiance to the ‘Matrix of Domination’. Collins wrote about domains of power and oppression that are largely classified into four groups (Structural, Disciplinary, Hegemonic and Interpersonal). This idea of four distinct domains of power gave readers a new understanding to the complex power structure of the

Collins in the text like any other feminist writer rejects the western binary thought but the idea behind the rejection is distinguished as she declines to detach theory from everyday experiences; she even refuses the requirements of positivism (theory) of isolating the subject from the object by immersing herself in the text as both an African American woman and as an academic. The material that she scans through; extracts from ‘slaves and domestic workers’, accounts of their lives, all this seems to be historically grounded and Collins vivid use of oral history, interviews, music, poetry, fiction brings out black woman’s standpoint into the limelight. A critic commented over her usage of methodology by saying “Finding her own voice and sharing with us the voices of other African-American women, Collins brilliantly explicates our unique standpoint… (Elizabeth Higginbotham, Professor of Sociology, University of Delaware, and co-editor of Women and Work: Exploring Race, Ethnicity, and Class (Volume