This book is the third instalment of bell hooks's teaching trilogy - I've read it for this blog before, hence that link going back to my original post about it, but I hadn't realised this was actually the final book in the series & I never got round to reading the first or second until the last few days.
Having now read the whole trilogy, I'll be perfectly honest & admit that there is a lot of content overlap; had hooks conceived of these books as a unit they would probably work better as a single 400-500 page volume rather than three 200ish page ones, but that's the point I guess - these were written a decade or so each apart as hooks's experience in pedagogy grew up around her ideas & praxis. If you're going to read any of them you should read all of them; what gets repeated is important enough to warrant repeating, not just about the ideal conditions of education but also matters of race, class, gender, consciousness, happiness, dreams & imagination, sexuality & spirituality, fear of death & anxiety of life, etc. While dealing with diverse, weighty topics indeed, tying everything together & helping simplify it to drive it all home is a powerful philosophy rooted in that very human & very divine phenomenon: love.
I would hold up this trio of very readable but deeply punchy books as essential for anyone involved in teaching of any kind, be that at the front of a classroom or lecture hall or from behind a pulpit or over a table in a café.
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