In “A Place Where the Soul Can Rest,” an autobiographical information piece published in bell hooks’ Belonging: A Culture of Place, she writes about the sexism, racism faced by African-American women in the American South. This essay is addressed to all the men and white people who treat the African-American woman poorly in order to make them understand her struggle and feel her sadness. She wants to be treated equal to any man and wants the white people in her community to accept her and treat her as an equal. Bell hooks is an African-American author, feminist and activist. Her writing focuses on the patriarchy, race, and gender.
This essay piqued my interest as it focuses on the patriarchy, sexism, and racism. I too have faced discriminatory treatment from people in my society because of my gender. It is interesting to see how different people find different ways to cope with the cruelty. For hooks, this is the porch, and for me, it’s my family. Hooks describes very starkly why women can’t go out late at night when she says, “A female lurking, lingering, lounging on a street corner is seen by everyone, looked at, observed. Whether she wants to be or not she is prey for the predator, for the Man, be he pimp, police or just a passerby” (118). Although the street is an unsafe place for women in India as well, I never considered how street corners are just for men and the connotation given to women who occupy them. She starts the essay off with how women can’t be at street corners because “Street corners have always been space that has belonged to men- patriarchal territory” (Hooks 118). Beginning her essay this way, makes it extremely clear to the reader what the rest of the essay is going to be about, yet pulls the reader in. Although she doesn’t explicitly say it and uses a matter of fact tone, you can tell that she despises this. Even though I don’t relate to the racism she’s experienced, she made her struggle extremely apparent through her writing.
Leslie Feinberg stated, “Two obstacles blocked my path like boulders: bigotry and poverty” (97). Feinberg talks at lengths about how the lack of money caused her physical health to deteriorate. I think hooks, like Feinberg, could have written more about her financial status and how that affected her lifestyle and how that changed once she started to make more money. In addition, I think she could also have spoken about her father’s reaction to her going to the west coast for an education and then becoming an author. “Like so much else ruined by patriarchal rage, so much other female space damaged, our father the patriarch took the porch from us one intensely hot summer night” (hooks 120). He did this to subdue the female power and make sure no other men saw his women. In her essay, she says her father ruined their porch like so many other things. The struggle she had with her father before going to college would further strengthen her point about how the patriarchy affects women.
I can’t even imagine how it must feel for someone to be compared to wild animal just because of their race. Even the act of sitting on a porch was considered too much like themselves for the white people to accept. Hooks states that “Growing up in the segregated South, I was raised to believe in the importance of being civil” (121), further insinuating and then in further pages showing us that the white folk are not civil to each other and ignore their neighbors. When greeted friendlily by hooks, they ignore her or make apparent that she’s the black sheep in the neighborhood. She calls it a small discomfort compared to what some people had to face a few decades ago. This doesn’t make how she was treated acceptable. When she talks about the state of the workers and how they kept their heads so as to not feel shame, like her, I too wanted to make their suffering end.
Using the porch as the central point that tied together the many parts of the essay and the many issues addressed, makes the essay more compelling to read. Her growth from having to ask permission to sit on the porch, to then fearing the porch and then finally having her own to share with her siblings ties the essay together and shows character development. She was able to get out of a racist and sexist neighborhood and prove that she’s so much more than her race and gender. By infiltrating the white folk neighborhood, she proved to them that African-Americans are equal to them. Although nobody likes their territory to be open to people who aren’t like them, the author shows that your skin color doesn’t make you different. As somebody who relates to the discriminatory treatment by the patriarchy, I think hooks described the situation very objectively and yet very distinctly. Having never faced racism, hooks’ description makes you wonder how other people can be treated so inhumanely and want to ease their suffering. Although hooks never talks about her own emotions, she invokes them in you.