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52779f4
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Students who excel in active listening also contribute much to the formation of community. This is also true of students who may not speak often but when they speak (sometimes only when reading required writing) the significance of what they have to say far exceeds those of other students who may always openly discuss ideas. And of course there are times when an active silence, one that includes pausing to think before one speaks, adds much..
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Bell Hooks |
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58b62fb
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When culture is based on a dominator model, not only will it be violent, but it will frame all relationships as power struggles.
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relationships
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bell hooks |
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49f69a5
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sometimes falling rain carries memories of betrayal there in the woods where she was not meant to be too young she believes in her right to be free in her body free from harm believing nature a wilderness she can enter be solaced believing the power that there be sacred place that there can be atonement now she returns with no fear facing the past ready to risk knowing these woods now hold beauty and danger
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rain
woods
danger
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Bell Hooks |
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bb33bbc
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I did not want to hear the pain of my male partner because hearing it required that I surrender my investment in the patriarchal ideal of the male as protector of the wounded. If he was wounded, then how could he protect me? As
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bell hooks |
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e9dfb78
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Thinking is an action. For all aspiring intellectuals, thoughts are the laboratory where one goes to pose questions and find answers, and the place where visions of theory and praxis come together. The heartbeat of critical thinking is the longing to know--to understand how life works. Children are organically predisposed to be critical thinkers. Across the boundaries of race, class, gender, and circumstance, children come into the world of..
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Bell Hooks |
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ed97d7e
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True resistance begins with people confronting pain... and wanting to do something to change it.
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pain
critical
solidarity
resistance
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Bell Hooks |
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cc8f53d
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Individuals who speak languages other than English, who speak patois as well as standard English, find it a necessary aspect of self-affirmation not to feel compelled to chose one voice over another, not to claim one as more authentic but rather to construct social realities that celebrate, acknowledge and affirm differences, variety.
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identity
language-learning
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Bell Hooks |
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32d462e
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think about the contradictions and complexities that beset people.
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reflections
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bell hooks |
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3a53c46
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Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression. I liked this definition because it does not imply that men were the enemy.
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bell hooks |
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cb24daf
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Masses of the people think that feminism is always the only about women seeking to be equal to men. Their misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media.
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bell hooks |
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6ffe240
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The essence of true love is mutual recognition-two individuals seeing each other as they really are. We all know that the usual approach is to meet someone we like and put our best self forward, or even at times a false self, one we believe will be more appealing to the person we want to attract. When our real self appears in its entirety, when the good behavior becomes too much to maintain or the masks are taken away, disappointment comes...
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love-quotes
true-love
love
mask
true-self
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bell hooks |
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04d04aa
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Keeping people in a constant state of lack, in perpetual desire, strengthens the marketplace economy.
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Bell Hooks |
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5031467
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Whether they are able to enact it as lived practice or not, many white folks active in anti-racist struggle today are able to acknowledge that all whites (as well as everyone else within white supremacist culture) have learned to overvalue "whiteness" even as they simultaneously learn to devalue blackness."
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bell hooks |
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a5b6e26
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to not understand neocolonialism is to not fully live in the present.
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Bell Hooks |
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15c7fcd
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Folks from the backwoods were certain about two things: that every human soul needed to be free and that the responsibility of being free required one to be a person of integrity, a person who lived in such a way that there would always be congruency between what one thinks, says, and does.
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bell hooks |
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17cbfb6
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All backwoods folks were poor by material standards; they knew how to make do. They were not wanting to tame the wildness, in themselves or nature.
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bell hooks |
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6c1f512
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If men were socialized to desire love as much as they are taught to desire sex, we would see a cultural revolution.
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bell hooks |
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a1511aa
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If women want a feminist revolution--ours is a world that is crying out for feminist revolution--then we must assume responsibility for drawing women together in political solidarity. That means we must assume responsibility for eliminating all the forces that divide women.
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Bell Hooks |
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f3b0e6e
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Our struggle is also a struggle of memory against forgetting.
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bell hooks |
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48e33e5
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Maintaining connections with family and community across class boundaries demands more than just summary recall of where one's roots are, where one comes from. It requires knowing, naming, and being ever-mindful of those aspects of one's past that have enabled and do enable one's self-development in the present, that sustain and support, that enrich. One must also honestly confront barriers that do exist, aspects of that past that do dimini..
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family
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bell hooks |
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13774ee
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No black woman writer in this culture can write 'too much'. Indeed, no woman writer can write 'too much'...No woman has ever written enough
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writing
women-writers
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Bell Hooks |
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5d7d133
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The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy
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bell hooks |
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ab08922
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When we are loving, we openly and honestly express care, affection, responsibility, respect, commitment, and trust.
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love
bell-hooks
loving
expression
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bell hooks |
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5c9a1b4
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As a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another's voices, in recognizing one another's presence.
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bell hooks |
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7a685b9
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She wanted me to remember that pleasure is political--for the capacity to relax and play renews the spirit and makes it possible for us to come to the work of writing clearer, ready for the journey. (bell hooks about Toni Cade Bambara)
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writing
toni-cade-bambara
pleasure
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Bell Hooks |
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fd79ea9
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Contrary to what some folks would have us believe, it is not tragic, even if undesirable, for a person to leave a liberal arts education not having read major works from this canon. Their lives are not ending. And the exciting dimension of knowledge is that we can learn a work without formally studying it. If a student graduates without reading Shakespeare and then reads or studies this work later, it does not delegitimize whatever formal c..
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bell hooks |
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55be3b1
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The "we" evoked here is all of us, black people/people of color, who are daily bombarded by a powerful colonizing whiteness that seduces us away from ourselves that negates that there is beauty to be found in any form of blackness that is not imitation whiteness."
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bell hooks |
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47bdc88
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Many women do not join organized resistance against sexism precisely because sexism has not meant an absolute lack of choices. They may know they are discriminated against on the basis of sex, but they do not equate this with oppression. Under capitalism, patriarchy is structured so that sexism restricts women's behavior in some realms even as freedom from limitations is allowed in other spheres. The absence of extreme restrictions leads ma..
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bell hooks |
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3ee1d8d
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The best sex and the most satisfying sex are not the same. I have had great sex with men who were intimate terrorists, men who seduce and attract by giving you just what you feel your heart needs then gradually or abruptly withholding it once they have gained your trust. And I have been deeply sexually fulfilled in bonds with loving partners who have had less skill and know-how. Because of sexist socialization, women tend to put sexual sati..
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love-quotes
sex
men
women
sexual-feelings
sexual-satisfaction
sexual-attraction
misogyny
patriarchy
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bell hooks |
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8bbc973
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Those who choose to walk on love's path are well served if they have a guide. That guide can enable us to overcome fear if we trust that they will not lead us astray or abandon us along the way.
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choice
fear
trust
love
guide
guidance
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Bell Hooks |
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8c3c83c
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a deep smothering emptiness
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bell hooks |
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9104b0b
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Women will only be truly sexually liberated when we arrive at a place where we can see ourselves as having sexual value and agency irrespective of whether of not we are the objects of male desire.
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feminism
sexuality
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bell hooks |
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7cfa64b
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The fear of being alone, or of being unloved, had caused women of all races to passively accept sexism and sexist oppression.
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Bell Hooks |
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69dbc6a
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move from emphasis on personal lifestyle issues toward creating political paradigms and radical models of social change that emphasize collective as well as individual change.
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bell hooks |
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993c74f
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While the patriarchal boys in hip-hop crew may talk about keeping it real, there has been no musical culture with black men at the forefront of its creation that has been steeped in the politics of fantasy and denial as the more popular strands of hip-hop.
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hip-hop
pop-culture
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bell hooks |
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f51f82e
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Isolation and loneliness are central causes of depression and despair. Yet they are the outcome of life in a culture where things matter more than people. Materialism creates a world of narcissism in which the focus of life is solely on acquisition and consumption. A culture of narcissism is not a place where love can flourish. The emergence of "me" culture is a direct response to our nation's failure tot truly actualize the vision of democ..
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depression
narcissism
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bell hooks |
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afd9722
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We cannot know love if we remain unable to surrender our attachment to power, if any feeling of vulnerability strikes terror in our hearts. Lovelessness torments.
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love
vulnerability
power
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bell hooks |
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a1192c9
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With reciprocity all things do not need to be equal in order for acceptance and mutuality to thrive. If equality is evoked as the only standard by which it is deemed acceptable for people to meet across boundaries and create community, then there is little hope. Fortunately, mutuality is a more constructive and positive foundation for the building of ties that allow for differences in status, position, power, and privilege whether determine..
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bell hooks |
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d31ce0e
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The whiteness celebrated in Paris is Burning is not just any old brand of whiteness but rather that brutal imperial ruling-class capitalist patriarchal whiteness that presents itself -its way of life- as the only meaningful life there is. What could be more reassuring to a white public fearful that marginalized disenfranchised black folks might rise any day now make revolutionary black liberation struggle a reality than a documentary affirm..
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social-justice
identity
neocolonialism
representation
race
power
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Bell Hooks |
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8cef627
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I think the invitation offered the non-black reader is to join us in this expression of our familiarity and via that joining, come to understand that when black people come together to celebrate and rejoice in black critical thinking, we do so not to exclude or to separate, but to participate more fully in world community. However, we must first be able to dialogue with one another, to give one another subject-to-subject recognition that is..
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bell hooks |
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8a9afd7
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To understand feminism it implies one has to necessarily understand sexism.
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bell hooks |
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f0f3fbd
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To be an oppressor is dehumanizing and anti-human in nature, as it is to be a victim.
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Bell Hooks |
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b0a3d72
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Women talk about love. From girlhood on, we learn that conversations about love are a gendered narrative, a female subject...Femaleness in patriarchal culture marks us from the very beginning as unworthy or not as worthy, and it should come as no surprise that we learn to worry most as girls, as women, about whether we are worthy of love.
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bell hooks |
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cdd9d0f
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To demystify the meaning of love, the art and practice of loving, we need to use sound definitions of love when talking with children, and we also need to ensure that loving action is never tainted with abuse.
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Bell Hooks |