A review by jerrica
Where We Stand: Class Matters by bell hooks
3.0
Though I liked this for the most part and found hooks' personal narrative fascinating, I found Chapter 7, entitled "The Me-Me Class: The Young and the Ruthless" to be just another run-of-the-mill old person complaining about the young, for example:
"In part, youth culture's worship of wealth stems from the fact that it is easier to acquire money and goods than it is to find meaningful values and ethics, to know who you are and what you want to become, to make and sustain and friends, to know love." (85)
"This generation has blood on its hands and does not care as long as the blood can be washed away by fancy soaps, aromatherapy, and a host of other little luxuries...When the deluded young are forced to face the reality that we are bound by class, by limited resources...they become rage filled and rage addicted. Only death, self-mutilation, or the slaughter of their peers appeases." (87)
Of course, hooks is writing soon after the Columbine shooting, as she cites it frequently as her main example of why teenagers are godless, stuff-driven machines who apparently are unable to know love in any form.
As many have said before me, hooks rarely cites her sources and often makes broad statements without backing them up with factual data, besides that of her own experience. Perhaps a couple NYC teenagers spray-painted Satanic phrases on her Greenwich Village apartment building, inspiring her to write this chapter about how we are all either obsessed with shopping or obsessed with death. Perhaps she stepped foot in a Hot Topic.
Either way, I found her statements about today's youth demoralizing considering our generation is the one currently being the one forced into abject poverty due to unemployment and student loans. Where we stand is a place where, as many have said, college is framed as a necessity but priced as a luxury. She frequently romanticizes her childhood of church and books without recognizing the fact that religion doesn't work for everyone, especially children of non-traditional families, and reading isn't always encouraged in public high schools, though she claims that public schools are places where "educational standards are excellent" (84). Again, another claim that she does not back up with any factual evidence.
BESIDES THAT, the book is well-written and accessible, something hooks claims that white feminist texts lack (not backed up by source). It's a worthwhile read into a personal narrative of crossing class boundaries and one woman's highly-leftist opinion on the treatment of the poor and the inequality of wealth. While those things do exist and probably have become even worse in the fifteen years since hooks wrote this book, maybe it would be best for her to give us some concrete evidence along with her broad-stroke statements.
"In part, youth culture's worship of wealth stems from the fact that it is easier to acquire money and goods than it is to find meaningful values and ethics, to know who you are and what you want to become, to make and sustain and friends, to know love." (85)
"This generation has blood on its hands and does not care as long as the blood can be washed away by fancy soaps, aromatherapy, and a host of other little luxuries...When the deluded young are forced to face the reality that we are bound by class, by limited resources...they become rage filled and rage addicted. Only death, self-mutilation, or the slaughter of their peers appeases." (87)
Of course, hooks is writing soon after the Columbine shooting, as she cites it frequently as her main example of why teenagers are godless, stuff-driven machines who apparently are unable to know love in any form.
As many have said before me, hooks rarely cites her sources and often makes broad statements without backing them up with factual data, besides that of her own experience. Perhaps a couple NYC teenagers spray-painted Satanic phrases on her Greenwich Village apartment building, inspiring her to write this chapter about how we are all either obsessed with shopping or obsessed with death. Perhaps she stepped foot in a Hot Topic.
Either way, I found her statements about today's youth demoralizing considering our generation is the one currently being the one forced into abject poverty due to unemployment and student loans. Where we stand is a place where, as many have said, college is framed as a necessity but priced as a luxury. She frequently romanticizes her childhood of church and books without recognizing the fact that religion doesn't work for everyone, especially children of non-traditional families, and reading isn't always encouraged in public high schools, though she claims that public schools are places where "educational standards are excellent" (84). Again, another claim that she does not back up with any factual evidence.
BESIDES THAT, the book is well-written and accessible, something hooks claims that white feminist texts lack (not backed up by source). It's a worthwhile read into a personal narrative of crossing class boundaries and one woman's highly-leftist opinion on the treatment of the poor and the inequality of wealth. While those things do exist and probably have become even worse in the fifteen years since hooks wrote this book, maybe it would be best for her to give us some concrete evidence along with her broad-stroke statements.