ABSTRACT
When bell hooks wrote about the centre and the margins of life she was referring to her own experiences and those of other black people who lived in segregated America. They knew only too well the two faces of American society. As carriers of water and hewers of wood, they were at the centre of society, providing services for their white masters and mistresses. This situation made them intimately aware of the opportunities and resources that were denied them because of ‘race’. Thus African-Americans were both centred and marginalized people. This chapter has provided me with the occasion as a black woman to reflect upon my own experiences of a centred and marginalized life in British academia.
