hooks has a real talent for conveying complex theory in highly-readable prose. In killing rage, she argues convincingly that ignoring race doesn't make one a non-racist person (neither a non-racist white person, nor a person of color free from internalized racism.) Rather if one wants to become a non-racist person, one must commit to confronting and dismantling, consciously and conscientiously, the insidious ways in which white supremacy is institutionalized in our society.

This is definitely not easy or light reading. It has given me much to consider when it comes to my own personal views and values. It's encouraged me to expand my thoughts on both racism, feminism and the intersection of them both.

bell hooks was an amazing black feminist activist and this confrontational book has her at her peak of militancy but always articulate and balanced in her views. Given the current political climate, a great book to discover or go back and re-read!

After watching the George Zimmerman trial, while at the same time working with a disabled African American man and his family who was brutalized by the Rochester Police Department, I needed some inspiration and analysis about race and white-supremacy in Amerikkka. bell hooks offered both in her book killing rage: Ending Racism. Even though the book was written in the mid-1990's, it has so much to offer that is absolutely relevant now.

Ultimately misguided, hyperbolic, self-serving, and blinded by bitterness. What's most telling about this author is that she has made it impossible to discuss her without addressing her pretension (for those not in the know, she insists her name be spelled all lower-case). According to her, this is meant to be a sign of her humility, a sign that the author's identity is unimportant--of course it achieves the opposite effect, placing intense importance on her, taking something that is normally ta...

Hooks says, “White rage is acceptable, can be both expressed and condoned, but black rage has no place and everyone knows it” (15). First, I just love her confidence as a writer—and everyone knows it—and second, her position here is important. Black rage needs a place, a public forum. If it is not claimed or re-claimed, as she suggests earlier in the book, then a kind of self-immolation and cultural immolation occurs.

Searingly powerful book calling out the injustices embedded in American society. I had to remind myself several times it was written 30 years ago. (I think I read it right before law school). It ties those injustices tightly with our economic system in a way that is likely true and exhausting. I know how a bill becomes a law. I know how to amend a constitution. I don't know how to build a more just economic system. The first paragraph of the last section ("Beloved Community") will haunt me. Some...

Angela Davis and bell hooks are great authors for examining race and racism the way they really should be examined – through their interrelationship to class and gender. After the suppression of the Black Panthers by the FBI’s Cointelpro program, black rage, however justified, became a sacrificial offering to whites. Blacks had to learn to choke down their rage. We still live in a white supremacist state (racism’s strongest weapon is not prejudice but domination) with violence condoned by the st...

“A black person unashamed of her rage, using it as a catalyst to develop critical consciousness, to come to full decolonized self-actualization, had no real place in the existing social structure.” This book took a while to read because it is dense and difficult. Part of the difficulty, no surprise, is being confronted with places I didn't see as embodying racism because I am part of the white dominant group. For instance, integration... mind blown. But the other part of the difficulty is the cu...

hooks' influence is widely felt today. This book raises questions and concerns that are still not answered. It isn't easy reading, but then again, very few things worth listening to and thinking about are. Agree or disagree with her, think she is a prophet or a fool, at least she will get you to think and talk.

This book gave me the vocabulary to finally describe the pain and anger I have felt in my past.

Another totally transformative book by bell hooks. The pages of the copy I borrowed were underlined like crazy. The book should just have one big underline under it, and many circles around it, and on the side, a big "YES!!!". Ok that is extreme, I am not that kind of underliner, but so many of the concepts in this book have been enlightening for me.Here is one quote, explaining the namesake of the book. At some point I'd like to compare this quote with Amber Hollibaugh's description of how she

A tough, but socially important book to read. We can only change behavior we are willing to acknowledge, after all.

By rights I should not be giving this any rating because I did not read it all. I borrowed this book now and skimmed it because I'd never seen anything by bell hooks and wanted to just look at it to see what folks are talking about when they raise her name. Dense, delicious seasoned reasoning, so hard to back away from, to turn one's back on. Any objection one might raise to giving African Americans their due and proper place in the growth and history of this country, she will have a calmly deva...

The opening essay is very much worth reading, though not for the reasons Bell Hooks offers. Think of her as a Nabokovian unreliable narrator, and it's both sad and hilarious. It's the story of a ticket mix-up on a plane. A white man has a ticket for a seat, and due to some error, a black woman believes the seat is hers, but her ticket says otherwise. To Hooks, all the whites who observe what happens are complicit in racism because they don't ignore the ticket and accept the black woman's word.It...

Short, but so incredible. Just one small vignette:"With the television on, whites were and are always with us, their voices, values, and beliefs echoing in our brains. It is this constant presence of the colonizing mindset paSSively consumed that undermines our capacity to resist white supremacy by cultivating oppositional worldviews."

you should this book if:you don't think racism exists any moreyou don't think there's anything you can do about racismyou think racism and sexism and classism are separate entitiesyou think black people are always so angryyou think bourgie blacks haven't escaped the racismyou believe the world should be color blindyou don't know why jews and blacks dislike each otheryou don't believe in white, patriarchal systems of poweretc etc. basically, everyone should read this book. mandatory reading. ther...

A lot of people said this book was angry but I got more urgency than anger. I think when reading or talking about race people get uncomfortable and hear an indictment out of truth. I found this book to be very challenging to my own thoughts about Blackness and my own class/educational/straight/cis privilege. I've learned new ways to be thinking of how to hold myself accountable and it's reinvigorated my interests in the importance of cultural/media literacy. She offers so many solutions in this

Great information serves as a reminder.. but honestly, corroborated a lot of emotions and thoughts I've been having for a long time. The thing about reading a book like this as a young black female is that it provides a sounding board and a place to feel like your thoughts are not crazy. It validates your mentality and shows you that what you're feeling is rooted in something much larger than you. It also reminds you that you have a role to play as well in certain situations by the way you think...

This book is a pile of contradictions that is as fascinating as it is ridiculous.  One wonders if the author is aware of just how much massive projection there is as she attacks a variety of facets while demonstrating the same qualities she decries.  Do you want a book that complains about black self-hating while demanding white self-hating, justifies anti-Semitism by accusing Jews of racism, argues for male self-hating while decrying female self-hatred in continual attacks on a supposed patriar...