Gloria Jean Watkins: A Literary Analysis

I learned how Ida B. Wells-Barnett started her life. Born as a slave, orphaned at 16, she became a teacher to support her surviving brothers and sisters. With the difficult circumstances brought upon her, it took an amazing amount of determination for her to fight for black civil rights and women’s rights in the 19th century. In a more civilized age, it’s harder to witness the courage she represented for the disadvantaged.

In Memphis Tennessee on January 31st, 1925 Benjamin Hooks was born. He was the fifth out of seven children by his parents Robert B. and Bessie White Hooks. Because of his family’s background and the amount of success they were able to obtain, Benjamin Hooks was brought into the world being held to a much higher standard than most. His father was a photographer along with his uncle Henry who partly owned a photography studio. The two of them were known across town as the Hook brothers. During a period of time where African Americans weren’t so fortunate to live as comfortable as the Hooks, Benjamin recalled that he still wore hand-me-downs and the money that they did have was carefully spent to keep food on the table etc. Along with the success of his family his Grandmother ,Julia Britton Hooks graduated from Berea College in Kentucky in 1874 and was only the second American Black woman to ever graduate from college. Her sister

bell hooks gains the power and credibility of her audience through knowledge of the topic at hand, establishing peace with the reader, and demonstrating honesty. Ethos shows an audience that the writer is credible, or expert in the subject of the agreement. bell hooks is widely known for being a writer, feminist thinker, and her academic background. She establishes her credentials through her personal struggles with understanding social class during adolescent. The reader gains respect for hooks as she takes the audience back to a time where they may have desired something, but never attained. For example she says, “As a child, [she] often wanted things money could buy that [her] parents could not afford and would not get”(hooks, 138). bell hooks writes to not only help others find strength to hold on to their desires, but to show how

Ida B. Wells is a name that should always be synonymous with African American modern history. Being born during the Civil War in the South and living her life through Reconstruction, history would play a huge role with her life. So when given the choice of being a background character or to take center stage, Wells found her spot light and shone like the morning sun. The South would do its best to stifle her voice both as child, though she would not know it, and as an adult. Yet Wells would show the strength and determination of an African American woman and prove that she was as much a part of the large scale Civil Rights Movement as her male counterparts.

(1) ‘Julia Hooks, fellow teacher and Musician, went to a concert with Wells (June 1886) shared the determination to stand up for civil rights with Ida. Hooks

Women have long been fighting for their right to be seen as equal to men. Even to this day, women continue to fight for their rights, things such as the right to non-gender discriminatory wages. While there may be some arguments over the state of gender equality in the modern world, it is undeniable that there have been great strides made toward recognizing the female 's worth in the workforce and as a human being. Despite these strides, however, things are still not yet ideal for women and many of the issues females face today are the very same issues that have been plaguing them for decades. While it is unfortunate the oppression of women has been so long-lived, the length of that exposure has thankfully enabled many talented writers to both lament over the fact and emphasize the need for gender equality.

Frances Ellen Walker Harper published a wealth of short stories, poetry, essays, and novels in the middle to late 1800s. She was born into a politically active, free black family, attended her uncle’s school, and became the first female teacher at the Union Seminary. Harper’s unusually comfortable class-status and extensive education allowed her to become a skilled writer on topics that interested her, such as politics, civil rights, feminism, and religion. Harper used her skill and passion to become economically and emotionally independent. In fact, much of her work echoes her identity as a middle class woman of color who supported herself through writing. However, this nature of independence was unusual for a woman in the 1800s, especially a black woman. Though Harper’s portrayal of strong, independent womanhood is a much needed depiction of women, Harper is unqualified to establish expectations for black women in the 1800s.

Hooks’ monograph was written to inform people how feminism was not just for women, but also for men. For she illustrated her thesis in the introduction when she said, “Come closer and you will see: feminism is for everybody,” meaning that men and women should

Within the excerpts of writing Sheryl Sandberg and bell hooks offer us, their focal point is feminism. Although this is the case, their reasonings for being a feminist are quite different. Sandberg focuses on rising in the career field as a woman, and hooks argues against her writing because she has a narrow definition of being a feminist. There are strong arguments for either side as to which is more correct.

Through this book, the most important point she puts emphasis on is the acknowledgment of the complex interlocking of classism, racism and sexism. Bell Hooks is not a poor working-class any more,

In Feminism is for Everybody, hooks introduces a popular theory of feminism rooted in common sense and the wisdom of her own personal experience. In my opinion, hooks’ book is perfectly poised to become THE OFFICIAL “handbook” or “cliff notes” to feminism. Although it’s short, Feminism is for Everybody is powerful. It addresses all of the most prevalent issues facing the contemporary feminist movement, everything from where feminism stands, reproductive choice, beauty, violence, race, class, work, all the way to where feminism will go in the future. She uses simple, direct language to express complex issues. However, that is not to say that she “dumbs-down” such topics. Rather, she makes them more comprehensible to those not as familiar with feminism as a discipline. This book offers everyone (man or woman) a chance to explore feminism. It serves as an eye-opener to all those “would be” feminists who are afraid to label themselves as such for fear of being called a man hater or worse, a lesbian! She dispels these myths and others, forcing her audience

Referring to these two stories or titles Virginia Woolf and Bell Hooks, I found very interesting topics on how women struggle with many difficulties on how to become a writers or to have a voice. Meaning that women’s didn’t have a voice or to have that freedom to speak freely, because they were marginalized. We can see how in the title “bell hooks” pg. 72 it explained how she struggle in their early years growing up in a segregated South community, where she didn’t had that help or that understanding why she need it to speak or write. Also hooks create a journey to help other women’s that were downgraded that had been victims of sexiest and racist violence. I can say both essays covers a great understanding on feminists challenge life and the

bell hook is a famous feminist author who wrote the book “Feminism Is For Everybody” hooks attempt to create a quick, simple start on feminist history, theory, and politics to the masses who receive a misinformation, misunderstood, and maligned version of the feminist movement. Hooks says “To understand feminism it implies one has to necessarily understand sexism”.We define feminism as the advocacy of women 's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.Where she simply define and shows that being feminism does not mean women have to become mean or they are better than men,she simply saying that men and women need to be equal like the civil right movements. The book begins with a brief statement of feminist political positions, then discusses some history of the movement.She discusses the change in the movement from personal to groups where women have close relationships with one another and began to feel personally empowered by their participation in the establishment of large, and how some women feel like they are working for the high middle-class women.Every single time it doesn’t matter you a women or men, you will always have someone in the higher level than you.hooks feel like it will very exciting for the women who have the power to work with other so they could build each other up..Hooks views the formation of large women’s organizations as the beginning of a stage where the movement took on the role of

This statement interested me because it made me begin to think about how she would want to organize feminists around the world. If she believes that society will not accept an organization that is trying to start a transformation, then how will she go about taking action? It seems to me that a transformation is the eventual goal that hook would want to reach. My question to her would be, “what ideas do you have about how to go about reaching a goal through feminism that society is not willing to accept?” Throughout the reading I thoroughly agreed with what she was saying but this issue was the only one that seemed to be left open. This issue was one of the most important because it is the course feminism needs to take to reach the long term goal of social equality.

The definition of feminism is very elusive. Maybe because of its ever-changing historical meaning, it’s not for certain whether there is any coherence to the term feminism or if there is a definition that will live up to the movement’s variety of adherents and ideas. In the book “No Turning Back,” author Estelle Freedman gives an accurate four-part definition of the very active movement: “Feminism is a belief that women and men are inherently part of equal worth. Because most societies privilege men as a group, social movements are necessary to achieve equality between women and men, with the understanding that gender always intersects with other social hierarchies” (Freedman 7).