No question about it, this powerful book is essential reading for women of all colors, particularly those involved in the researching and writing of feminist hystory. Ain't I a Woman teaches us new questions to ask and new ways to perceive what has been lying under our noses. It is a consciousness raiser, for every feminist who thought she already knew the basic story.

bell hooks develops her analysis from the slavery experience of those who were both black and female; she shows unrelentingly how both white women and black men (not to mention white men) have benefited from the double oppression of black women. There is plenty here to make a white feminist flinch. At the same time Hooks holds black men accountable for their misogyny and ridicules the notion that black men learned sexism from white men: it existed in Africa, she says, and it certainly exists now in the U.S. A in't I a Woman absolves no one; it points out a difficult path for each of us, no matter what our color or our gender.

A in't I a Woman does have its flaws, among them the invisibility of lesbians and a tendency to assume that the contemporary women's liberation movement is monolithic. I question her assertion that separate black feminist groups are inherently "reactionary," and I wish she had used footnotes or detailed textual references to make it easier to locate sources.