Rooster's Egg the Rooster's Egg

By Patricia J. Williams

Book Overview

"Jamaica is the land where the rooster lays an egg...When a Jamaican is born of a black woman and some English or Scotsman, the black mother is literally and figuratively kept out of sight as far as possible, but no one is allowed to forget that white father, however questionable the circumstances of birth...You get the impression that these virile Englishmen do not require women to reproduce. They just come out to Jamaica, scratch out a nest and lay eggs that hatch out into 'pink' Jamaicans."
--Zora Neale Hurston

We may no longer issue scarlet letters, but from the way we talk, we might as well: W for welfare, S for single, B for black, CC for children having children, WT for white trash. To a culture speaking with barely masked hysteria, in which branding is done with words and those branded are outcasts, this book brings a voice of reason and a warm reminder of the decency and mutual respect that are missing from so much of our public debate. Patricia J. Williams, whose acclaimed book The Alchemy of Race and Rights offered a vision for healing the ailing spirit of the law, here broadens her focus to address the wounds in America's public soul, the sense of community that rhetoric so subtly but surely makes and unmakes.

In these pages we encounter figures and images plucked from headlines--from Tonya Harding to Lani Guinier, Rush Limbaugh to Hillary Clinton, Clarence Thomas to Dan Quayle--and see how their portrayal, encoding certain stereotypes, often reveals more about us than about them. What are we really talking about when we talk about welfare mothers, for instance? Why is calling someone a "redneck" okay, and what does that say about our society? When young women appear on Phil Donahue to represent themselves as Jewish American Princesses, what else are they doing? These are among the questions Williams considers as she uncovers the shifting, often covert rules of conversation that determine who "we" are as a nation.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674779436
• ISBN13: 9780674779433
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 276 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

QUESTION EVERYTHING

One can reach the pinnacles of law, yet Williams forces us to question everything: the structure of power, the continuing inequities, the superficialness of progress.... It's depressing really yet the author makes it fun to read and learn about unspeakable realities.

Riposte to previous reviewer

I disagree with your dismissal of this book. I found it very serious and thought-provoking. As a feminist theorist I am concerned with reading everything available on matters of gender and bias; Williams' book was valuable for the many things she says of which I was not aware of or which I had not previously considered.Your concern that Williams' book "dilutes" feminism, or that it is not "radical" enough in its treatment of education, shows more about your particular concerns than it does about her work. Dismissing Williams' thought in the way you do, in fact, suggests to me that you have a particular bias of your own concerning what is properly part of "women's interests" and are unwilling to confront Williams's work seriously and allow it to affect your view of race and gender prejudice. I can hardly imagine anyone better placed, or better able, to diagnose and analyze the "persistence of prejudice" than Professor Williams, and I think she ought to be listened to even though there are specific contentions within the book with which I disagree. Her style, which combines personal reflections with wider theorizations of race, gender, and prejudice, is quite germane methodologically, and her insights are productive ones. I believe that anyone seriously concerned with understanding issues of education, prejudice, law, and culture could derive benefit from serious reading of Williams' work.

Hard to be especially enthusiastic, but...

This is hardly the sort of book that is going to impress everyone with revelatory arguments, or even offer a new perspective upon contemporary cultural discourse, but Williams is at least occasionally lively in her discussions of feminism. I'm afraid I don't find her disucssions of education even the least bit compelling, and we need to turn to more radical and inventive/transgressive voices for that. Perhaps this book could be of use to high school students, however, in that it would promote classroom discussions without presenting any difficulties of argument such as that produced by more progressive thinkers. Prof. Williams is best at short, snappy chit chat regarding race and feminism, and I'm surprised that she has taken it upon herself to author entire books which might dilute the field. However, as an African American who is challenging the contemporary paradigms of race in this society, I'm pleased to discover all the help I can get.