Outlaw Culture

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.

'The reader discovers ... that bell hooks is a joy to read, her work a nimbly written hybrid form of social commentary, by turns personal, political, and in-your-face.' - San Francisco Chronicle Examiner'Outlaw Culture should be read, regardless of whether one agrees with feminism as presented by hooks. hooks raises critical issues that all should find engaging as well as challenging!' - Real African World, Bridgitt Mwamini Robertson'She brings to the task of cultural criticism an astute eye and a courageous spirit ... Hers is a voice that forces us to confront the political undercurrents of life in America.' - New York Times Book Review'hooks' 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.' - Publishers' Weekly, '[hooks] made a choice to write for the largest possible audience, to change the greatest number of lives.' - Times Higher Education Supplement

bell hooks (b. 1951) is mainly known as a feminist thinker, although her writings cover a broad range of topics on gender, race, teaching and the significance of media for contemporary culture. She is Distinguished Professor of English at City College in New York.