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aliciaclarereads 's review for:
Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower
by Brittney Cooper
read for Popsugar 2019 Reading Challenge: a book about someone with a superpower
Cussing and praying. Mixing the profane and sacred together. No one can cuss you out more eloquently than a Black woman can. It might be a stereotype, but it's also a truth. We cuss out of rage, and we pray that the cussing will be enough to get the rage out. We curse those who trespass against us, and we pray for divine help to overcome those very same systems. ... Most Black girls and women come to lean on that same holy language for divine help when the system shows up to mash them into a million pieces. Rage and respectability can't exist in the same space. But cussing and praying absolutely can.
I LOVED THIS. What an excellent collection of essays! Cooper's writing strikes a perfect balance of intellectual and accessible. Basically you can read this and feel so smart as your parse through her thoughts, without getting bogged down by superfluous academic jargon. Cooper digs into issues surrounding race and gender in America and how black women are stuck in the middle of these issues. She goes into sexuality, religion, ambition, and education all through the lens of why black women have so much rage. But she goes a step further of demonstrating how black women channel that rage into a means of survival. I think if you're vaguely aware of issues surrounding racism and sexism, a lot of the points Cooper makes aren't new. However it doesn't feel like a basic primer; there's still more to learn from what she writes, especially as she incorporates her personal stories. And boy oh boy did her discussions about religion and womanhood resonate with me! I just kept nodding and saying "yes, yes, yes!" throughout the whole chapter.
Most Christian theology infantilizes women in just this manner. It makes us think that because we are all children of God, God only ever sees us as children. And, as a result, we'll be grown women afraid of embracing our sexuality, approaching it with the ingrained trepidation we learned in our teenage years. I rebuke this foolishness. I am God's child, as I think every human being is. But God knows I'm grown.
If I had any critiques, it's that the essays are a little long. They're not repetitive but could've been edited down slightly to be more concise. Also, there wasn't any citing of studies. She references a lot of different statistics, but I'm not quite sure where she got them from.
All in all, this is an excellent book that I highly recommend. I'd like to personally deliver the essay on white women tears to every single white woman I know.
Cussing and praying. Mixing the profane and sacred together. No one can cuss you out more eloquently than a Black woman can. It might be a stereotype, but it's also a truth. We cuss out of rage, and we pray that the cussing will be enough to get the rage out. We curse those who trespass against us, and we pray for divine help to overcome those very same systems. ... Most Black girls and women come to lean on that same holy language for divine help when the system shows up to mash them into a million pieces. Rage and respectability can't exist in the same space. But cussing and praying absolutely can.
I LOVED THIS. What an excellent collection of essays! Cooper's writing strikes a perfect balance of intellectual and accessible. Basically you can read this and feel so smart as your parse through her thoughts, without getting bogged down by superfluous academic jargon. Cooper digs into issues surrounding race and gender in America and how black women are stuck in the middle of these issues. She goes into sexuality, religion, ambition, and education all through the lens of why black women have so much rage. But she goes a step further of demonstrating how black women channel that rage into a means of survival. I think if you're vaguely aware of issues surrounding racism and sexism, a lot of the points Cooper makes aren't new. However it doesn't feel like a basic primer; there's still more to learn from what she writes, especially as she incorporates her personal stories. And boy oh boy did her discussions about religion and womanhood resonate with me! I just kept nodding and saying "yes, yes, yes!" throughout the whole chapter.
Most Christian theology infantilizes women in just this manner. It makes us think that because we are all children of God, God only ever sees us as children. And, as a result, we'll be grown women afraid of embracing our sexuality, approaching it with the ingrained trepidation we learned in our teenage years. I rebuke this foolishness. I am God's child, as I think every human being is. But God knows I'm grown.
If I had any critiques, it's that the essays are a little long. They're not repetitive but could've been edited down slightly to be more concise. Also, there wasn't any citing of studies. She references a lot of different statistics, but I'm not quite sure where she got them from.
All in all, this is an excellent book that I highly recommend. I'd like to personally deliver the essay on white women tears to every single white woman I know.