A Place Where The Soul Can Rest By Belle Hooks Analysis

“It invites one to be still, to hear divine voices speak” (hooks,125). This quote from A Place Where the Soul Can Rest by belle hooks describes the importance of the front porches to African American women who faced issues and judgment regarding their race, gender, and social standing. The porch signifies a place in which these women can relax, and escape not only from their household duties, but from all of the discrimination they face in their own neighborhoods. In the essay, the author herself reflects on her childhood as a young African American, and how her life was affected by racism, sexism, and gender stereotypes and roles. As a child, hooks’ place of safety and security lied on her front porch, where she was able to escape

Although the porch does seem to be protected by the man of the house, the porch for these women is a place in which a man can only look at and not touch, and is something that they themselves are able to have complete control over. The question of whether the porch signifies security or territory really can be determined by person experience. In my own life, my bedroom is my “porch,” but not because it’s a place in which nobody can enter, but because it is a place in which I can be alone with my own thoughts and ideas. With this in mind, I believe that the porch in hooks’ eyes is more so significant of territory, because the porch for her is not a place in which she is protected, but is a place in which she has claimed as her own. When hooks stated that “the swing hinted at the underlying desire to move freely, to be transported” (hooks,121), she was certainly implying that this place where she could escape from her chores and roles as a woman was also a place in which she could look out on the world through her own eyes, and interpret and develop opinions on things based on her own experience and