Homegrown ― Engaged Cultural Criticism

In Homegrown cultural critics bell hooks and Amalia Mesa-Baines reflect on the innate solidarity between Black and Latino culture. Riffing on everything from home and family to multiculturalism and the mass media, hooks and Mesa-Baines invite readers to reexamine and confront the polarizing mainstream discourse about Black-Latino relationships that is too often negative in its emphasis on political splits between people of color. A work of activism through dialogue, Homegrown is a declaration of solidarity that rings true even ten years after its first publication.

This anniversary edition includes a new conversation between hooks and Mesa-Baines in which they reflect on what both has or hasn’t changed since their initial dialogue.

A cultural critic, an intellectual, and a feminist writer, bell hooks is best known for classic books including Writing Beyond Race, Feminism is for Everybody, Feminist Theory, Bone Black, All About Love, Belonging, We Real Cool, Where We Stand, Teaching to Transgress, Teaching Community, Outlaw Culture, and Reel to Real. hooks is Distinguished Professor in Residence in Appalachian Studies at Berea College, and resides in her home state of Kentucky where she runs the bell hooks Institute for Contemplation, Critical Thinking and Dreaming.

San Francisco resident Amalia Mesa-Bains is an artist, scholar, curator, and writer who has been involved in the Chicano artist movement since the 1960s. A leading installation artist and MacArthur awardee, Mesa-Bains incorporates Chicano culture and folk traditions into her work, utilizing themes inspired by Catholic rituals, Mexican pre-Christian religious imagery, Chicana history, and female rites of passage.

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