Hooks, bell

Challenging Feminist Writers

hooks used Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center and other works to challenge white feminist writers to consider how race, class, and gender oppression was perceived from the perspective of black women. Given that many women of color do not have the option of staying home to raise their children, hooks posits that the meaning and practice of motherhood calls for a more critical analysis of how white supremacist capitalist patriarchy affects women differently.

In Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood (1996), hooks connects race, class, and gender in her narrative of the relationship between the character and her mother, highlighting how the construction of black mothers as disciplinarians and overly protective parents connects to a larger devaluing of black women. In this case, hooks advances the idea that black mothers internalize white supremacist assumptions [Page 536]about black women, thus directing their daughters not to act in accordance with what society expects of black women, and punishing them when they do.

Since the perceived white supremacist apparatus marks black women as meek, hypersexual, and lacking appropriate womanhood in fundamental ways, black daughters are often pressured to resist these attacks by performing in ways that challenge these stereotypes, yet constrain them in other ways. bell hooks describes the relationship between the daughter and mother as a mother who resists coddling her daughter in order to prepare her for the harsh world she will face as a black women. At the same time, this preparatory practice prevents emotional bonds that could be realized in their relationship.