An author's voice can be characterized as that author's fingerprint on their work. It is that sense that only this author is able to write this work. No one else sounds like this author.
In "Killing Rage," bell hooks demonstrates her skill and ability to write strong personalized anecdotes woven into academic languages and scholarly references. This ability characterizes her voice in this piece.
In this short essay, bell hooks chronicles her experience of coming into her black rage. She uses an anecdote with her friend K to exemplify an instance in which racism and sexism intersected on a commercial airline flight. hooks uses the anecdote with her friend K to interrogate her own approaches to racist behavior and uses back scholars and authors to investigate her urge to murder the white man sitting next to her on the plane, as well as to explain his expressed fear of her.
hooks writes that black leaders have often been more concerned about their dialogue with white people than uplifting black voices.
Their repression of rage (if and when they feel it) and their silencing of the rage of other black people are the sacrificial offering they make to gain the ear of white listeners.
She goes on to say,
Forgetfulness and denial enable masses of privileged black people to live the "good life" without ever coming to terms with black rage.
In "Killing Rage," hooks argues for a different approach to anti-racism. She focuses her voice to stress the importance of tapping into black rage and tempering it with "engagement with a full range of emotional responses to black struggle for self-determination."
Saturday, June 15, 2019
How might you analyze bell hooks's voice in "Killing Rage" and the story about hooks and her friend K?
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