Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism

Strongly recommended. The two authors create a conversation about art, life, culture, race, teaching, etc. Great read. Chock full of interesting perspectives.

In "homegrown: engaged cultural criticism", black feminist intellectual bell hooks and Chicana visual artist Amalia Mesa-Bains challenge the mainstream media's attempt to polarize African-Americans and Latina/os. Exploring commonalities and differences, they insist on a radical women of color politic to confront male, white, heterosexual, ruling-class hegemony. In this short but informative text, these two brilliant thinkers discuss a broad range of social issues like immigration, Hurricane Katrina, multicultural education, the war, and interlocking systems of oppression like racism, sexism, and classism. They also discuss their childhood histories, family relationships, spiritualities, and views on art and culture as a means of contextualizing their oppositional politics. Read this insightful book, then begin the crucial work of building a truly meaningful multicultural feminism.