bell hooks never disappoints! Granted, this is only the second book I have read by bell hooks, but I am still blown away every single time. Even though this is the second edition of Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery, everything in this text is still very relevant (unfortunately). For the most part, this text has aged very well (with parts here and there about the gender binary and queerness that would probably need tweaking).
As a Black woman, this text touched me in many ways, expected and unexpected. I loved how bell hooks always manages to grip me with concepts rooted in the academic and based on her lived experience. This is what makes her content so relatable and digestible for readers of all backgrounds. She writes with Black women in mind.
This was not your typical self-help book. There were practical things that Black women could do to connect to themselves, each other, and their communities, however, the presentation isn’t in your typical self-help fashion. There are no cliches, no toxic positivity. It is a Black woman getting real with us, using her own life as example and making sure to reinforce that she isn’t perfect.
I took so many notes. So many things from all the chapters stood out to me. I wanted to make sure I held on to them to use in my own journey to self-actualization.
I always pay attention to the narrators of audiobooks, especially in nonfiction. I pay attention to how I feel as if the narrator is encapsulating the essence of the author. Can they capture the voice that is on the page? For the author of this book, I thought she did a great job engaging with both the text and the listener in a way that portrayed the heart of the book.
Overall, I will always recommend bell hooks. It can be difficult to find bell hooks’ work on audio, but I love that there is an effort to make her books more accessible to all.
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