Black Looks

In the critical essays collected in Black Looks, bell hooks interrogates old narratives and argues for alternative ways to look at blackness, black subjectivity, and whiteness. Her focus is on spectatorship--in particular, the way blackness and black people are experienced in literature, music, television, and especially film--and her aim is to create a radical intervention into the way we talk about race and representation. As she describes: the essays in Black Looks are meant to challenge and unsettle, to disrupt and subvert. As students, scholars, activists, intellectuals, and any other readers who have engaged with the book since its original release in 1992 can attest, that's exactly what these pieces do.

bell hooks was a Distinguished Professor in Residence in Appalachian Studies at Berea College. Born Gloria Jean Watkins in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, she chose the lower case pen name bell hooks, based on the names of her mother and grandmother, to emphasize the importance of the substance of her writing as opposed to who she was. A writer and critic, hooks was the author of more than thirty books, many of which have focused on issues of social class, race, and gender. Among her many books are the feminist classic Ain't I a Woman, the dialogue Breaking Bread (with Cornel West), the children's book Happy to Be Nappy, the memoir Bone Black, and Art on My Mind: Visual Politics (The New Press). She lived in Berea, Kentucky.

• Publisher: ‎Routledge; 2nd edition (October 29, 2014)
• Language: ‎English
• Paperback: ‎200 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎1138821551
• ISBN-13: ‎9781138821552
• Item Weight: ‎9.6 ounces
• Dimensions: ‎5.4 x 0.4 x 8.4 inches