Response to Bell Hooks

The first part of this essay talks about Gloria Watkins (hooks) experience growing up as a little girl. Watkins discusses the importance of her mother and the place she created, homeplace. Watkins's mother worked for a white family all day long, but when she came home, homeplace was established. Homeplace was "a safe place where black people would affirm one another and by so doing heal many many of the wounds inflicted by racist domination" (69-70). Watkins understood how hard it was for a black woman in these times to establish homeplace because they were exhausted from working all day. She appreciated these efforts by her mother and valued what her mother had done for her and the family. Watkins wants the African American community to realize that homeplace is remarkable and vital.

Unfortunatley, Watkins believes that the efforts of African American women are being devalued. Homplace has lost it resistance, and many people have forgotten what the word symbolizes to the community. Watkins sees a political shift in the African American community, where the women are being pushed aside. These women have responded by changing their values and perspectives, which Watkins idenifies as "the crisis of black womanhood" (74). This is the worst thing that they have done.

Watkins believes that if the African American women do not change their values back to the idea of homeplace, then the result will be the eventual destruction of the African American family life. African American women must renew their "concern with homeplace" (75) so that everyone else remembers its (homeplace) significance . Watkins knows the solution to their political problem. The question is, will the other African American women follow her lead?