Melissa's Reviews > Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

I have been dedicated to feminist, liberatory pedagogy since I began to teach, but admittedly I never read much about it, its development, its history, and how it used by others. My own feminist praxis informed my teaching and my commitment to create an environment which was non-hierarchal, which elevated the voices of the subjugated, and which created communities of love, respect, and critical inquiry. Going to hooks at this moment in my career was motivated by a desire to deepen that commitment, to reflect, and to strengthen that praxis with theory.

The "engaged pedagogy" she details in this book is inspiring, militantly feminist and anti-racist, and radically transformative. I wish I had more teachers like her and the authors who inspired her like Freire rather than many of the dictators (to use her terminology) who use education as a pretext to dominate, to bully, and to force their students into conformity. Will that type of "education" only be abolished once white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy goes as well?

Some of the most interesting parts of Teaching to Transgress autobiographically document her own education, how she found liberation despite the constant humiliations many of teachers subjected her to because of race, gender, and class. hooks is convinced that both teachers and their students must work to be self-actualized, must work to be present in education in their minds, bodies, and spirits and that shows through her willingness to open herself and history up to her students and her audience. Education is personal and political growth.