Ain’t I a Woman
A classic work of feminist scholarship, Ain’t I a Woman has become a must-read for all those interested in the nature of black womanhood. Examining the impact of sexism on black women during slavery, the devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism among feminists, and the black woman’s involvement with feminism, hooks attempts to move us beyond racist and sexist assumptions. The result is nothing short of ground
breakingbreaking, giving this book a critical place on every feminist scholar’s bookshelf.
A cultural critic, an intellectual, and a feminist writer, bell hooks is best known for classic books including Feminist Theory, Bone Black, All About Love, Rock My Soul, Belonging, We Real Cool, Where We Stand, Teaching to Transgress, Teaching Community, Outlaw Culture, and Reel to Real. hooks is Distinguished Professor in Residence in Appalachian Studies at Berea College, and resides in her home state of Kentucky.
Contents
1. sexism and the black female slave experience
2. continued devaluation of black womanhood
3. the imperialism of patriarchy
4. racism and feminism
the issue of accountability
index
Growing up I knew that I wanted to be a writer. From girlhood on books had offered me visions of new worlds different from the one that was most familiar to me. Like exotic and strange new lands, books brought adventure, new ways to think and be. Most importantly they brought a different perspective, one that almost always forced me out of my comfort zones. I was awed that books could offer a different standpoint, that words on the page could transform and change me, change my mind. During
my undergraduate college years, contemporary feminist movement was challenging sexist-defined roles, calling for an end to patriarchy. In those heady days, women’s liberation was the name given to this amazing new way of thinking about gender. As I had never felt like I had a place in traditional sexist notions of what a female should be and do, I was eager to participate in women’s liberation, wanting to create a space of freedom for myself, for the women I loved, for all women.
My intense engagement with feminist consciousness raising compelled me to confront the reality of race, class, and gender difference. Just as I had rebelled against sexist notions of a woman’s place, I challenged notions of women’s place and identity within women’s liberation circles, I could not find a place for myself within the movement. My experience
ence as a young black female was not acknowledged. My voice and the voices of women like me were not heard. Most importantly, the movement had exposed how little I knew about myself, my place in society.
I could not truly belong in the movement so long as I could not make my voice heard. Before I could demand that others listen to me I had to listen to myself, to discover my identity. Taking women’s studies courses had shined a spotlight on society’s expectations of females. I had learned many new facts about gender differences, about sexism and patriarchy and the ways these systems shaped female roles and identity, but I learned little about the role black females were assigned in our culture. To understand myself as a black female, to understand the place set for black females in this society, I had to explore beyond the classroom, beyond the many treatises and books my fellow white female comrades were creating to explain women’s liberation, to offer new and alternative radical ways of thinking about gender and women’s place.
To forge a place for black females in this revolutionary movement for gender justice, I had to deepen my understanding of our place in the large society. Even though I was learning so much about sexism and the ways sexist thinking shaped female identity, I was not being taught about the ways race shaped female identity. In classes and in consciousness-raising groups when I called attention to the differences created in our lives by race and racism, I was often treated with disdain by white female comrades who were eager to bond around shared notions of sisterhood. And there I was, this bold young black female from rural Kentucky, insisting that there were major
differences shaping the experiences of black and white women. My efforts to understand those differences, to explain and communicate their meaning, lay the groundwork for the writing of Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism.
I began researching and writing during my undergraduate years. It amazes me that more than forty years have passed since I began the work. Initially my search for a publisher led to rejection. In those days no one really imagined there to be an audience for a work about black women. In general, black folks then were far more likely to denounce women’s liberation, seeing it as a white woman thing. As a consequence, black female individuals who eagerly embraced the movement were often isolated and estranged from other black folks. We were usually the only black person in predominately white circles. And any talk of race was viewed as shifting the attention away from the politics of gender. No wonder then that black females had to create a separate and distinct body of work that would bring together our understanding of race, class, and gender.
Mating radical feminist politics with my urge to write, I decided early on that I wanted to create books that could be read and understood across different class boundaries. In those days feminist thinkers grappled with the question of audience: who did we want to reach with our work? To reach a broader audience required the writing of work that was clear and concise, that could be read by readers who had never attended college or even finished high school. Imagining my mother as my ideal audience—the reader I most wanted to convert to feminist thinking—I cultivated a way of writing that could be
understood by readers from diverse class backgrounds.
Finishing the writing ofAin’t I a Woman, then years later seeing the work published in my late twenties, marked the culmination of my own struggles to be fully self-actualized, to be a free and independent woman. When I entered my first women’s studies class, taught by the white woman writer Tillie Olson, and listened to her talk about the world of women struggling to work and parent, women who were often held captive by male domination, I cried as she cried. We read her seminal work I Stand Here Ironing and I began to see my mama and women like her, all raised in the fifties, in a new light. Mama married young, while still in her teens, had babies young, and though she would never have called herself a woman’s libber she had experienced the pain of sexist domination, and that led her to encourage all her daughters, all six of us, to educate ourselves so that we would be able to take care of our material and economic needs and never be dependent on any man. Sure we were to find a man and marry, but not before we learned to take care of ourselves. Mama, who was herself held captive by the bonds of patriarchy, encouraged us to break free. It is fitting then that an image of Rosa Bell, my mother, now graces the cover of this new edition.
More than any other book I have written, my relationship to my mother informed the writing of Ain’t I a Woman and inspired me. Written when contemporary feminist movement was still young, when I was young, this early work has many flaws and imperfections, yet it continues to serve as a powerful catalyst for readers who are eager to explore theroots of black women and feminism. Even though mama has died, no day passes that I do not think of her and all the black women like her, who with no political movement supporting them, no theory of how to be feminist, provided practical blueprints for liberation, offering generations coming after them the gift of choice, freedom, wholeness of mind, body, and being.
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