For bell hooks, the best cultural criticism sees no need to separate politics from the pleasure of reading. Yearning collects together some of hooks's classic and early pieces of cultural criticism from the '80s. Addressing topics like pedagogy, postmodernism, and politics, hooks examines a variety of cultural artifacts, from Spike Lee's film Do the Right Thing and Wim Wenders's film Wings of Desire to the writings of Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison. The result is a poignant collection of essays which, like all of hooks's work, is above all else concerned with transforming oppressive structures of domination. About the Author: bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins, 1952-2021) was a pioneering feminist whose writings revealed how the specific life experiences of Black women were marginalized by the idea that feminism represented all women equally. A professor of English, African and Afro-American studies, American literature, and women's studies, she taught at the University of Southern California, Yale, Oberlin College, City College of New York, and Kentucky's Berea College, which established the bell hooks Institute for her work. The author of more than thirty books of literary criticism, children's fiction, poetry, and autobiography, including the New York Times bestseller All About Love: New Visions; Salvation: Black People and Love; Communion: the Female Search for Love; Killing Rage: Ending Racism; Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood; Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life; and Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work, hooks was nominated for the NAACP Image Award, won an American Book Award, and was named one of Time's 100 Women of the Year in 2020. Celebrated as one of America's leading public intellectuals, she was a charismatic speaker and writer who taught and lectured around the world. A resident of Kentucky and New York City, she died in 2021.
|