The Truth That Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom

Author: Smith, Barbara

Brand: Rutgers University Press

Edition: First Paperback Edition

Features:

• Used Book in Good Condition

Binding: Paperback

Number Of Pages: 232

Release Date: 01-08-2000

Details: Product Description  The Truth That Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom brings together more than two decades of literary criticism and political thought about gender, race, sexuality, power, and social change. As one of the first writers in the United States to claim black feminism for black women, Barbara Smith has done groundbreaking work in defining black women’s literary traditions and in making connections between race, class, sexuality, and gender. Smith’s essay “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism,” is often cited as a major catalyst in opening the field of black women’s literature. Pieces about racism in the women’s movement, black and Jewish relations, and homophobia in the Black community have ignited dialogue about topics that few other writers address. The collection also brings together topical political commentaries on the 1968 Chicago convention demonstrations; attacks on the NEA; the Anita Hill–Clarence Thomas Senate hearings; and police brutality against Rodney King and Abner Louima. It also includes a never-before-published personal essay on racial violence and the bonds between black women that make it possible to survive. Review A feminist writer and theorist of some repute, Smith founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press with the late "black lesbian mother warrior feminist poet" Audre Lorde, and was the first woman of color appointed to the Modern Language Association's Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession. Her seminal 1977 essay "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism," which puts forth the notion that a "Black women's literary tradition" not only exists, but thrives, fittingly opens this collection of newer and older, still vibrant works, most previously published in often hard-to-find journals or anthologies. Noting that "it is unnerving to imagine" what kind of writing she might have produced had she not come out, Smith registers obstacles to her current work on a wide-ranging history of black lesbians and gays in America, citing a recent two-volume encyclopedia (Darlene Clark Hine's Black Women in America) in which there are only six entries under "Lesbian." In the final essay of the collection, "A Rose," Smith recalls her friend, the late Lucretia "Lu" Medina Diggs, and mourns the loss of her and Lorde, stressing that she will not be deterred from her fight for political awareness and compassion. Smith's writing frequently reaches strident polemicist peaks, but, just as frequently, stretches of sublime prose translate her crystalline intellect to the page, exciting both mind and senses.-- "Publishers Weekly" A provocative collection of impassioned essays written from a radical, gay, African-American, feminist perspective. Smith, co-founder and publisher of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, has been publishing literary and social criticism for over 20 years. As a literary critic, she chastises the academic establishment for often misinterpreting and largely disregarding the voices of black womengay black women in particular. In one of her most influential essays, ``Toward a Black Feminist Criticism, '' written in 1977, Smith, contending that ``black women writers constitute an identifiable literary tradition, '' pleads for a black feminist approach toward examining literature. Only the black feminist critic, she argues, is fully able to comprehend the nuances of work by black women, such as the depth of Sula and Nells relationship in Toni Morrisons novel Sula. Smith is also critical of nonlesbians addressing the black lesbian experience. In ``The Truth that Never Hurts, '' published in the late '80s, she argues that positive depictions of black lesbians are sorely lacking and that ``far too many non-lesbian black women who are actively involved in defining the African-American womens literary renaissance . . . completely ignore black lesbian existence or are actively hostile to it.'' Smiths equally fervent social and political writings are informed by a Marxist vi

Package Dimensions: 9.0 x 6.1 x 0.4 inches

Languages: English