ABSTRACT
My most important encounter with the work of bell hooks came at the beginning of my graduate school career. I started graduate school with excitement and enthusiasm enough to last me through my graduate school career-or so I thought. By the end of my fi rst two semesters, the dawning of an ever-present gloom and anxiety hovered around me like the cartoon character’s Pigpen’s dust cloud. I was no stranger to gloom and anxiety; however, this felt like a fi ght for my life in which my enemy was unknown to me. Me, as my own worst enemy, I understood, but this sense of fi ghting for my life appeared to me to be more than just me, yet the enemy did not seem be a particular other as far as I could tell. It was then that I read Talking Back: Th inking Feminist, Th inking Black (1989). It had been a gift ; a book I hadn’t read yet and one I did not suspect would be important to my graduate education in philosophy.1 Needless to say, hooks articulated the pain and strength of my past as well as the pain and victories I was yet to face.
