From Richard Labonte, The Advocate:
"[The sense] of how political passion empowers personal life marks Minnie Bruce
Pratt’s essays, collected in Rebellion. The Southern-born Pratt writes with
empathy and clarity about such topics as capitalism and greed, racism and hate,
anti-Semitism and denial and coming out and strength (not all her wisdom is defensive).
Here is one of those astonishing book that make one think, again and again, Of course,
that makes sense."
From Publishers Weekly:
"Pratt’s eleven polished, articulate essays in Rebellion offer a striking
example of everyday philosophy at work: a feminist assessing her experiences and learning
from them, whether remembering her mother as a social worker in the South or noting the
false cheer in exchanges between herself—a white woman—and her black janitor,
divided by a social and historical chasm. In "Rebellion," Pratt looks back on
the small Alabama town where she was raised, which honored the memory of the Confederacy
but gave short shrift to contemporary rebels against a social order based on inequality.
In "Identity: Skin Blood Heart," the author describes breaking through the
"protective" barriers that circumscribed her youth as she tries to "learn a
way of looking at the world that is more accurate, complex, multi-layered." "I
Plead Guilty to Being a Lesbian" explores her act of civil disobedience to protest
the Supreme Court’s refusal to invalidate state sodomy laws. In "My
Mother’s Question" Pratt considers what it means to have money or privilege,
probing the provenance of what one of her students called "my money" and
wondering who has lost by her gain."**Order Information for
Rebellion: Essays 1980-1991
paper ISBN 1-56341-006-0
cloth ISBN 1-56341-007-9
Is available from:
Firebrand Books
2232 S. Main St. #272
Ann Arbor, MI 48102-6938
Phone: 248-738-8202
firebrand@firebrandbooks.com
http://www.firebrandbooks.com |
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