SOURCE: A review of Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 11, No. 4, summer, 1986, pp. 788-89.

In the following review, Pettis praises Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center for the balance it brings to feminist theory and the feminist movement.

Bell Hook's second book [Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center] is distinguished from other texts on feminist theory by her Black feminist stance. Hook's perspective, as one who understands not only the meaning of being on the margin but also the workings of the center, informs her merciless dissection of conceptual blunders in the ideology of feminist theory that excludes nonwhite and poor white women or masses of American women.

Chapter by chapter, Hooks points out how the articulators of feminist theory have excluded nonwhite and working-class women primarily by disregarding "white supremacy as a racial politic," and by ignoring...