Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics by critic, academic, and writer bell hooks is described by the author as a primer, a handbook, even “a dream come true” (ix). In the Introduction to the book, hooks describes her labor of love in writing this brief guide to feminism, and she employs a concise style that does not waver from her goal of educating readers about the fundamentals of feminism. This book is the product of the many conversations bell hooks has had with men and women who ask her the fundamental question: “what is feminism?” (xii) In brief, hooks explains, at the start of the book and again at the end in its concluding chapter, that “[f]eminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression” (xii).

Summary

In the preface to the new edition of Feminism Is for Everybody, hooks addresses the problem of academic jargon that afflicts many feminist texts available to readers who want to learn more about feminism. She describes “fe[eling] that somehow the movement had failed if we could not communicate feminist politics to everyone” (ix).