40 pages • 1 hour read
Brittney CooperEloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “The Smartest Man I Never Knew”
Content Warning: This section of the book includes depictions of racialized violence, violence against women and girls (including sexual violence), and debilitating use of alcohol.
Mann, Cooper’s father and a war veteran, had drinking binges and bouts of intense anger during which he abused his wife and Cooper. He died when Cooper was nine. Cooper went into crisis after a family acquaintance told her that Mann was a brilliant and empathetic man who worried about starving children on the African continent. It took therapy and an understanding of intersectionality for Cooper to see that one man could encompass both identities. It was toxic masculinity—antisocial behaviors resulting from restrictive ideas about masculinity—that marred the lives of all the Coopers.
Toxic masculinity is also “America’s daddy issue” (94). For Cooper, the United States’ wars abroad are global expressions of violent dominance and devaluation of women and girls’ lives. Cooper surprised herself when she wanted Barack Obama to use this power to rescue Black girls who soldiers kidnapped during the first war in Sudan. Examining that uncomfortable, contradictory feeling made her realize that she has longings for Black men to protect Black women and girls and to show up when Black women and girls die at the hands of police.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Bag Lady”
Cooper remembers the day she had to give a talk on intersectionality while inwardly grieving the death of Sandra Bland, a Black woman who died in police custody. The officer arrested Bland because of her supposedly defiant tone during a routine traffic stop. Bland was on her way to a new job in the midst of managing depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Black women live with such precarity every day, yet people still demand resilience. They also minimize Black women’s trauma as self-inflicted baggage that Black women should handle on their own.
Gurus such as Iyanla Vanzant sold books and built media empires during the 1990s by selling self-help to Black women looking for healing. Self-help did help Cooper’s mother heal from the trauma of violence and domestic abuse. Nevertheless, self-help harms Black women—including Cooper—by ignoring the systemic causes of their baggage. Self-empowerment talk cannot overcome trauma because “power is conferred by social systems” (123), not individual choices.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Grown Woman Theology”
Cooper long delayed having sex because of purity culture, which encourages waiting until marriage for sex, and Black respectability, which taught her that sex was an impediment to success, especially when it results in pregnancy. When Cooper was about to enter graduate school, her grandmother told her granddaughter just how much fun sex was when her grandmother was a young woman. Cooper should have sex, but she should use condoms, which Cooper’s grandmother misnames as “combos.” Even so, Cooper threw away her romances and a vibrator after a church sermon on purity.
Alternate texts—her grandmother’s talk, the writing of other Black women—say that consensual touch and sex are sacred, healthy, and healing. Cooper shows that even the Bible includes stories about sex as a good thing by retelling the biblical story of Naomi and Ruth’s plan to seduce Boaz. Not everyone is comfortable with Cooper’s ideas on this topic. Readers of the Crunk Feminist Collective blog blasted Cooper when she discussed the issue. Cooper closes the essay with an image of her embarking on her own quest for good sex.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Cooper’s use of autobiographical detail in these selections exemplifies the themes of The Importance of Relationships and Vulnerability and The Personal Is Political: Storytelling as Feminist Practice.
Cooper’s persona in these three selections is vulnerable and authentic, especially as she engages in analysis of how systemic forces have played out in her personal life. In Chapter 4, “The Smartest Man I Never Knew,” she lays bare the deep pain of having a father who was abusive when present and whose absence created more hardship for her family. Cooper makes a bargain with the reader: She will share what most hurt her in this relationship, and the reader in turn will follow along with her from her acknowledgment of her personal pain to a taboo discussion about Black men’s violence against Black girls and women.
Throughout her revelations about abuse in her life, Cooper inserts moments of analysis. For example, just after a description of the intense grief of her family over her father’s death, Cooper notes that “each and every time men try to deflect conversations about intimate partner violence in Black communities by talking about how ‘men are victims of abuse, too,’ I want to hit them myself” (76). There is both rage and exasperation in her reaction comment, but also humor that lightens the tone. When analysis provides relief from heavy emotional content, the practical effect is that the reader is attentive to the analysis and more likely to continue reading despite the difficult stories Cooper shares.
Through this candid storytelling, Cooper shows that her feminism emerges from lived experience, especially in the context of loving friendships and family ties. Cooper relies on such experience to navigate touchy subjects and address readers who may be resistant to what she has to say. Cooper’s discussion of sexuality and faith in Chapter 5, “Grown Woman Theology,” is a case in point. Cooper frames her discussion of sex and faith with a story about her grandmother, whom she depicts as a representative of all the Christian aunts and grandmothers who have taught Cooper’s readers that sex outside of marriage is a failure of faith and the path to disreputability. Cooper’s story about how her grandmother gave her permission to have sex disrupts readers’ expectations.
Cooper also uses other strategies for swaying readers who may be resistant to what she has to say about sex and faith. She uses humor to disarm readers. Cooper makes much of her grandmother’s mispronunciation of “condom” and paints a comical picture of herself dumping out her sex toys because of a sermon. Cooper then acknowledges her readers’ possible resistance by mentioning how angry this same discussion made Crunk Feminist Collective blog readers. Finally, Cooper engages in deliberate (but also humorous) provocation by including an irreverent retelling of the Naomi and Ruth story, one in which, “with the blessing of her elders, Ruth mapped out what she wanted and went after it” (138) by seducing Boaz so she that can marry him.
Telling stories about her grandmother and re-telling the story of Ruth allow Cooper to create an alternate text for Black female theology. Cooper closes the essay with a picture of herself embarking on an exploration of sex and pleasure. That image serves as a reminder to the reader that Cooper isn’t asking the reader to do anything she hasn’t done herself.
