Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

According to the Washington Post, no one who cares about contemporary African-American cultures can ignore bell hooks' electrifying feminist explorations. Targeting cultural icons as diverse as Madonna and Spike Lee, Outlaw Culture presents a collection of essays that pulls no punches. As hooks herself notes, interrogations of popular culture can be a ¿powerful site for intervention, challenge and change¿. And intervene, challenge and change is what hooks does best.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction: The Heartbeat of Cultural Revolution
• 1 Power to the Pussy - We don't Wannabe Dicks in Drag
• 2 Altars of Sacrifice - Remembering Basquiat
• 3 What's Passion Got to Do With It? An Interview with Marie-France Alderman
• 4 Seduction and Betrayal - The Crying Game Meets The Bodyguard
• 5 Censorship from Left and Right
• 6 Talking Sex - Beyond the Patriarchal Phallic Imaginary
• 7 Camille Paglia - "Black" Pagan or White Colonizer
• 8 Dissident Heat - Fire with Fire
• 9 Katie Roiphe - A Little F

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

This latest collection of hooks's (Sisters of the Yam, LJ 8/93) essays does not make for comfortable reading-nor is it meant to. Cogent essays on patriarchy, violence, and racism demand that the reader reexamine familiar assumptions. The author insists that white feminists recognize that the female experience varies greatly and that class and race must therefore be used as categories of analysis. In several essays, including one on Malcolm X, she offers a feminist perspective on the position of black men in society and their attitudes toward black women. In critiques of Camille Paglia, Katie Roiphe, and Naomi Wolf, hooks describes them all as hankering back to a prefeminist time. Other essays include a discussion of violence, the myth of Columbus, and the portrayal of blacks on film. Highly recommended for collections on feminism, gender, and race.-Sharon Firestone, Ross-Blakley Law Lib., Arizona State Univ., Tempe (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Turning from teaching to topical subjects like gangsta rap, censorship, date rape and Hollywood cinema, these 21 essays will enhance City College professor and political activist hooks's (Black Looks) reputation as an astute, vigorous and freewheeling critic on matters of race, class and gender. The underlying focus in many of these short, occasional pieces (many are reprinted from magazines like Spin and Art in America) is on how some groups, particularly women of color, are marginalized both in daily life and in the cultural wars over media representations and the academic curriculum. Memorable essays touch on questions of censorship inside and outside the academy, the dearth of feminist perspectives on Malcolm X, the impact of commodity culture on political debate and the shortcomings of mainstream gender theorists Camille Paglia, Naomi Wolf and Kate Roiphe. Though formulaic at times, hooks's critical style is refreshingly brash and accessible and often inflected by personal experience. Readers may contest her politics, yet few will be unmoved by the spirit that animates these essays: a desire to rethink cultural institutions that sustain racism, sexism and other systems of political oppression. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved