Her book is as much a book about love as it is about anger: self-love and the struggle to find and hold it; love for the many women in her life, as well as public figures from Ida B. Wells to Audre Lorde to Terry McMillan to Hillary Clinton...and at least implicitly a love of justice, of equality, of righting wrongs and telling truths. It is a warm and generous work, and a fierce one ... Cooper’s is distinct both for its telling as the author’s own journey and for its—yes—eloquent personal voice, which, between her erudition (she is a professor at Rutgers) and her command of vernacular, is funny, wrenching, pithy, and pointed.
...Brittney Cooper builds a manifesto mostly from memoir ... Cooper writes movingly about coming of age as a black woman in the Baptist Church and on the campus of Howard University—two bastions of black power and, in her experience, black patriarchy ... Cooper’s attention to the complex dynamics of anger is illuminating even for readers who don’t agree with the positions she ultimately takes.
Her writing voice—at turns incredibly smart and homegirl slick—will slide right into black feminist cannon along with bell hooks’ Talking Back, Joan Morgan’s When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost and, of course, Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider. Cooper is a black girl’s black girl and writes with the authority and the love of someone who loves black women. My book is earmarked, underlined, co-signed and sanctified ... It is, in a word, excellence. In another, necessary. Or a third, meaningful.
... Cooper masters the art of intertwining the scholarship of eminent Black feminists such as bell hooks and Audre Lorde with regular Black girl jargon ... Cooper captures Black girls’ journey to womanhood by dissecting our experiences with love, family, social systems, and everything in between. Her chapters are full of snapworthy material that Black women will read and say, 'me too.' Eloquent Rage allowed me to pause, reflect, and find my own superpower ... This book is for 'grown ass women'; it is serious, it is heavy, and it is light ... Eloquent Rage is for young twenty-something Black girls growing into their womanhood, as well as older adult Black women. Cooper’s book also celebrates where you are right now, as she is very transparent about her process ... This book discusses Black women’s plight and it is imperative for Black men to read and understand it ... Cooper’s inclusion of Sandra Bland feels like a way of saying her name. The insertion of these tragedies serves as a reminder that Black women are not immune to systemic racism and violence. We carry it all ... thought-provoking and reflective. It challenged my understanding of feminism but also made me comfortable readjusting and expanding my current understanding of feminism. Eloquent Rage is fierce, hilarious, and accessible, versatile enough to be read in college classrooms, coffee shops, and book clubs. After documenting all the BS we’ve endured and will continue to endure, Cooper reminds us that joy comes in the morning. The inclusion of optimism and Bible verses are a perfect reminder to continue to smile.
Eloquent Rage would be a great title for a furious tirade, but that’s not what it is. Cooper’s 'Capital B, Capital F' for Black Feminism might also be for Big Feels, as she dives head first into them ... If anyone comes to this work expecting a personal memoir to unfold into a course reader on Black feminist thought, know that this is not what you will get. With Eloquent Rage, Cooper offers refreshingly honest and vulnerable insights into her life: a mapped journey of Black Feminist awareness as a mirror into herself ... her pronounced adoration of Beyoncé ... is one of a handful of misapplications of politics-as-personal where Cooper’s pure conjecture bludgeons the personhoods of those she would rather dismiss. Cooper is willing to psychologize critics as 'unpretty' and 'unpopular' perennial malcontents, and flatly misrepresents the words of bell hooks and others as speaking from a politics of resentment ... Ultimately, Eloquent Rage offers readers a front-row seat into one Black woman’s gestation into feminist awareness, but I am uneasy about the room it leaves for other Black women to do the same.
In sharing her evolution into a self-professed black feminist grateful for Beyoncé as a feminist icon, Cooper deftly examines friendships between black women. In her case, this often meant not being considered black enough ... An insightful read for teens questioning politics or faith and those looking to learn more about black feminism and social justice.
Cooper...provides incisive commentary in this collection of essays ... Cooper is at her best and most inflammatory in an essay titled 'White Girl Tears,' in which she bulldozes white feminists for cultural appropriation and failing to 'come get their people' during the 2016 presidential election. Cooper also cleverly uses Michelle Obama’s hair to craft an artful censure of respectability politics and discusses Beyoncé as a cultural symbol of black female solidarity. In these provocative essays, Cooper is both candid and vulnerable, and unwilling to suffer fools.
Sharp and always humane, Cooper’s book suggests important ways in which feminism needs to evolve for the betterment not just of black women, but society as a whole. A timely and provocative book that shows 'what you build is infinitely more important than what you tear down.'
