Social critic, writer, university professor and lecturer bell hooks' new book picks up where her more recent works: All About Love: New Visions and Salvation: Black People And Love left off. Her latest work Rock My Soul: Black People And Self Esteem examines the varied and sundry ways African people's psyches have been assaulted, bruised, brutalized and damaged and what we must do to heal ourselves. hooks is one of the great thinkers of our time a Sistah who has engaged in the arduous task of what she calls in many of her writings "decolonizing" her mind.

During the 80's pop psychologists spoke freely of self-esteem and how poor self-esteem was a humongous weight upon the psyche of anyone unfortunate enough to have developed a low self-image and fractured self-concept. Most of these psychologists and psychiatrists were writing for and speaking to the larger Euro-AmeriKKKan public.

Little time and effort went into examining why and how people of color in general and Africans in AmeriKKKa in particular manifest low self-esteem and self-hatred. hooks in her take no prisoners tell it like it is style explains how the slavery and post Civil War racial caste system experience with its gender chauvinism and oppression, color obsession and class biases shaped how Africans in AmeriKKKa saw themselves and how we attempted to cope with the dehumanization and demonization process AmeriKKKa subjected us to. hooks, as usual, looks at the situation with fresh eyes bringing a feminist perspective to her subject that provokes thought and makes the reader continue reading, put the book down to ponder the profundity of what she is saying or abandon reading it altogether because she hits a raw nerve.

Like a shaman or medicine woman hooks' written words serve as an incantation to induce a higher consciousness, a mental and spiritual possession if you will, that helps the reader transcend the somnambulism of white supremacist propaganda and sets us on a path of self-examination, enlightenment and healing. She examines the irony of AmeriKKKan racial history, sharing how racist patriarchal oppression attempted mightily to squash the African spirit, how the black community during the pre-Civil Rights period protected the precious psyches of black children against racist assault, how the Black Power movement raised black people's self-esteem but how assimilationist values coupled with improved economic conditions and relaxed psychological defenses led to African people imitating of the ways of the oppressor and how a mass media cultural apparatus that promote patriarchal imperialist white supremacist and individualistic values causes us to reject and hate who and what we are.

hooks provides often overlooked  insights into the causes of our current malaise as well as offering suggestive solutions such as the need to develop critical thinking skills, a liberating spiritual base, personal integrity and courage,  the formulation of a pedagogy that validates  and affirms blackness and a return to racial upliftment and communal responsibility. While self-esteem is subjective and personal, it spills over in our interpersonal, and filial lives. When a whole community or people are under relentless assault by the forces of genocidal white supremacy and its psychological defense systems have faltered, individuals within the community exhibit a myriad of chronic symptoms of low self-esteem which in turn motivates them to engage in self-negating and self-destructive behaviors that put the whole community at risk. We certainly see examples of this in our communities on a daily basis.

So many folks decry the state of Black AmeriKKKa today with its increasing symptoms of culturally induced pathology such as an escalating suicide rate, teen pregnancies and single parent households, fratricide, substance abuse and dependency, chronic depression and a growing sense of hopelessness, impotence and nihilism that are in many ways indicative of our lost sense of self and poor self-esteem.

hooks is wise enough to realize that while self-esteem is subjective, and a prime determiner for the inner quality of one's life and is essential for a sense of adequacy, confidence and coping in a hostile world of racial oppression albeit a much different form of oppression than that experienced by past generations; individually and collectively we must develop a sense of positive race esteem if we are to become whole, self actualized personalities and communities. The book's 226 pages are an easy read, although much of the material may be painful, because of its candor.

Nevertheless it is well worth the endeavor. Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem is published by ATRIA Books and retails for $23, a mere pittance for the insight, healing and hope it offers.

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bell hooks is a distinguished professor of English, cultural critic, feminist theorist, and writer, who divides her time among teaching, writing, and lecturing around the world. She is the author of more than twenty books and lives in New York City. Born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky in 1952, hooks, received her B.A. from Stanford University in 1973, her M.A. in 1976 from the University of Wisconsin and her Ph.D. in 1983 from the University of California, Santa Cruz. In her new book Rock My Soul hooks "rigorously examines and identifies the barriers -- political and cultural – that keep African Americans from emotional well-being. She looks at historical movements as well as parenting and how we make and sustain community. She discusses the revolutionary role preventative mental health care can play in promoting and maintaining self-esteem.