Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

Introduction

Published three years after Ain’t I a Woman, the book is hooks’s most systematic statement of what feminism should be. She criticises Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) for presenting the frustrations of white, college-educated housewives as the problem of all women, and argues that those at the margin – poor women and women of colour – can see the whole structure of domination more clearly than those at the centre. Feminism should therefore be understood as a movement to end sexist oppression, not as a claim to equality with the men of one’s own class. Further chapters deal with sisterhood, men in the movement, violence, parenting and education.

More works by bell hooks

• 1981Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism