Summary an amazing visionary

Reviewer's Comments

hooks, bell. (2003). Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope. Routledge. 160 pages, $17.95 paperback.

Reviewed for THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER by Aaron Eckhardt.

bell hooks is an amazing visionary who continues to set a high standard of social justice and anti-racist work with Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, the newest addition to her bibliography of over 20 published books.

This book inspires me from beginning to end. hooks weaves her very personal life experience and journey together with a much larger societal struggle to end white supremacy. She takes her readers on a voyage through time, and makes the point that we—the United States of America—have always lived, and continue to live, in what she calls the “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (p.1). According to hooks, this racist set of values governs everything that society does. She also points out that it will continue to do so if the majority—the white majority—does not heed messages like hers and end racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and every other form of discrimination.

As hooks asserts in Teaching Community, we Americans live in a society dominated by imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy, in which all white people are accountable for the actions of white people, whether those actions were intended to be racist or not. Intent is not an excuse anymore. hooks states that white supremacist thought and ideals are alive, well, and rarely discussed. The women’s study movement has laid important groundwork for the anti-racist movement within higher education.

In Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, bell hooks captures the nature of doing what is right in the face of adversity, just because it is right. She examines her own actions and class privilege alongside those of others. This book takes its readers through learning, language, service, and setting new standards for education; it deals with subjects that the “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal values” tell us not to, such as spirituality in education, sex as passion, death, and hope. Teaching Community breaks ground into a new world of “democratic education” (p. 41). Now is the time to learn with students to create space for growth and integration of thoughts and feelings.

This book will re-awaken a sense of urgency and spirit within all who read its words and take them to heart. Teaching Community should be a must-read for any critically conscious person—and white people—everywhere.

Reviewed by Aaron Eckhardt, MSW, LSW. Aaron earned his MSW from Spalding University in June 2004 and is working in Chicago.

This review appeared in the Summer 2004 issue of THE NEW SOCIAL WORKER.