Subtitle: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom
Author: Barbara Smith
Subject: African American Studies/Gender Studies/Women's Studies
Paper ISBN 0-8135-2897-6
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-2573-X
Pages: 232 pp.
Description: A classic collection of black feminist writings
"As a black lesbian feminist activist and scholar, Smith is a highly respected voice of conscience who speaks discomforting but necessary truths about the interlocking nature of oppressions within American culture and institutions. These landmark essays . . . show Smith challenging academic, political, and community organizations to expand their missions in order to include persons who have been perennially at the margins of our society. . . . Recommended."--MultiCultural Review
"The Truth That Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom provides a universal message about struggle, resistance, and freedom, grounded within a black Lesbian feminist critique of America's culture and politics. The cogently written essays represent a cross-section of Smith's work over the past twenty years and the first book dedicated exclusively to her own writing. Focusing on race, feminism, and the politics of sexuality, Smith provides an alternative lens to view the world by making connections between systems of oppression and offering suggestions for social change."--The Washington Blade
"Smith's book is an excellent example of powerful, introspective writing that challenges readers to reexamine their stance on complex issues concerning race and gender."--The Bloomsbury Review
"Stretches of sublime prose translate [Smith's] crystalline intellect to the page, exciting both mind and senses."--Publishers Weekly
"Smith's writing is arrow-sharp and uncluttered; her arguments, refreshingly tinged with the often-unheard perspective of a Black lesbian, linger and dance in the mind."--Essence
"Want to know how today's body of Black feminist writing and literature came into being? The Truth that Never Hurts tells a good part of the story."--The Women's Review of Books
"Smith's writing frequently reaches strident polemicist peaks, but, just as frequent, stretches of sublime prose translate her crystalline intellect to the page, exciting both mind and senses."-- Publishers Weekly
"A provocative collection of impassioned essays . . . This manifesto is always challenging and often convincing."--Kirkus Reviews
"Her essays are thought-provoking and insightful on race and gender and the emotional issues all women face."--Booklist
"Smith's book demonstrates the viability of black feminist criticism in the field of cultural studies, and - most important - the need for a black lesbian perspective within black feminist critical theory."--Choice
"Barbara Smith has provided us with a collection of erudite and profound writings. I see this compendium of essays spanning some thirty years of scholarly and activist participation as her intellectual autobiography. Her writing is smart, incisive and instructive. Her truths, if heeded can 'keep us honest.' All of the essays offer compelling material for reflection."--Journal of Lesbian Studies
"What Smith's book gives us is the example of someone moving through the years, still willing to bear witness loudly and directly, with emotion and fierce intellect, even when she feels as though she has said the same words before and few people were listening. Reading theses essays is about more than perfecting an analysis or gaining insight into one political Black lesbian's life over the past three decades- - it's about learning how to keep watching and listening and doing the work."--Lambda Book Report
"This collection underscores Smith's role as an impassioned thinker and activist."-- Feminist Bookstore News
"There's something awe inspiring about a collection of essays, put out at the height of an author's power, calling us to action as much as it recalls the activisms of the past. Tracing the struggles and triumphs of black gays and lesbians, this book celebrates and critiques gayness as it has unfolded across the past 20 years."--Out Magazine
"Provides a universal message about struggle, resistance, and freedom, grounded within a black Lesbian feminist critique of America's culture and politics. . . . focusing on race, feminism, and the politics of sexuality, Smith provides an alternative lens to view the world by making connections between systems of oppression and offering suggestions for social change."--The Washington Blade
"In short, she is a woman of ideas, a woman of action, a woman who has made her vocation her life, her life her vocation. This book gives some of the breadth and depth of her ideas, her activism, and her life."-- The Lesbian Review of Books
"Smith's book is truly A Call to Arms ... to do ... something ... anything ... everything. If you've every called yourself an activist or if you have strong political convictions of any kind, this is a must read, to give you ammunition for the cause."--Outlines
"Fascinating reading for those who are familiar with her work as well as those discovering her for the first time."-- Philadelphia Gay News
"Essays that remain as refreshing and insightful today as when they first appeared."-- Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review
"As a black lesbian feminist activist and scholar, Smith is a highly respected voice of conscience who speaks discomforting but necessary truths about the interlocking nature of oppressions within American culture and institutions. These landmark essays, written from the 1970s to the present, show Smith challenging academic, political, and community organizations to expand their missions in order to include persons who have been perennially at the margins of our society."--MultiCultural Review
"Sobering in what it has to tell us, The Truth that Never Hurts forces us to face those truths that disrupt the placid surfaces of our lives. A personal/political odyssey that documents some of the most critical moments in the last three decades of our national life, Smith's book forces us to new levels of awareness. Her piercing eye and uncompromising search for human justice for all make this volume must-reading for everyone who cares about the future."--Nellie Y. McKay, co-editor, The Norton Anthology of African American Literature
"Barbara Smith is visionary, courageous, and insightful. Her work provides a crucial challenge to all of us."--Cornel West, Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor, Harvard University
"The ancestors are surely ecstatic about the diligence, courage, passion, and good humor exhibited in The Truth That Never Hurts. This is a landmark work from a pioneering activist who has always kept the faith."--Evelyn C. White, editor, The Black Women's Health Book
"Barbara Smith's uncompromising intelligence helped invent the politics of intersection which grounds progressive thinking today. These essays deliver trenchant analysis from one of the most original, astute, and practical thinkers in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender movement."--Urvashi Vaid, director, The Policy Institute, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
"At every moment of serious political crisis-and no thinking person can argue that ours is not such a moment-certain writers step forward with words that seem to ring from the very heart of history. Barbara Smith is certainly one of these writers, and her new book, electrifying, thought-provoking, illuminating, eloquent, harsh, and funny, is essential reading. Whether you agree with everything she says is not important; the essays in this book will revivify your heart and mind and reawaken a passion for activism and for justice."--Tony Kushner
"Not every activist can write, or, when writing, can perform such direct and spirit-restorative work as Barbara Smith has done in this collection."-Grace Paley, writer
"Smith has provided us with a collection of erudite and profoundly moving writings [which are] smart, incisive, and instructive. There is no stone that Smith has left unturned. From homophobia in the black community to police brutality and including racism in the women's movement, black women and anti-Semitism . . . Barbara Smith has explained the linkages between the multiplicity of oppressions facing blacks in general and black lesbians in particular."--Journal of Lesbian Studies
"The Truth That Never Hurts is an important contribution to the contemporary dialogue about race and freedom in America."--Southeastern Political Review
As one of the first writers in the United States to claim Black feminism for Black women in the early seventies, Barbara Smith has done groundbreaking work in defining a Black women's literary tradition; in examining the sexual politics of the lives of Black and other women of color; in representing the lives of Black lesbians and gay men; and in making connections between race, class, sexuality, and gender.
Smith's essay "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism" is often cited as a major catalyst in opening the field of Black women's literature. This essay also presented the first serious discussion of Black lesbian writing. Essays about racism in the women's movement, Black and Jewish relations, and homophobia in the Black community have ignited dialogue about topics that few other writers address. The collection also brings together topical political commentaries that examine the 1968 Chicago convention demonstrations; attacks on the NEA; the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas Senate hearings; and police brutality against Rodney King and Abner Louima.
Barbara Smith is co-founder and publisher of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. She has edited three major collections about Black women, including Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology(Rutgers University Press), and is co-editor with Wilma Mankiller, Gwendolyn Mink, Marysa Navarro, and Gloria Steinem of The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History.
