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bell hooks with Tanya McKinnon
DU R I N G M O S T O F T H E more than twenty years that I have spent as a critical thinker, writing conventional literary criticism, annotated according to the MLA style sheet, as well as the unconventional feminist theory and cultural criticism that has been my claim to fame such as it is, I was not in the public eye. Like many women of my generation, I finished my Ph.D. late. My experience of graduate school was somewhat unconventional in that I had already written and published Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981) before I wrote my dissertation on Toni Morrison's first two novels, The Bluest Eye (1970) and Sula (1973). I wanted most to be a writer, but also an academic. While these two conflicting desires created tensions and anxiety, the longing to be a writer enabled me to rebel against the academic status quo.
While it is exciting that I have fulfilled my childhood dream both of being a writer and having a successful academic career, one of the dilemmas I now confront as I receive more and more attention in both alternative and mainstream media is the issue of representation. Because so much of the work I have done within feminist theory and cultural studies critically interrogates the way images are constructed to perpetuate and maintain sexism and racism, I am utterly mindful of the way in which my own understanding of what it is to be a black woman insurgent intellectual/ writer is increasingly subordinated to the way in which I am represented by various structures of that white supremacist capitalist patriarchy I have spent my adult life critiquing. Let me give one example. Recently, I was asked to do a profile with the Chronicle of Higher Education (Leatherman 1995). Approached by a Chronicle reporter, I agreed. She showed up quite early in the morning at the door of my West Village apartment in New York City. She shared...