I don’t know why I didn’t read this when it came out, smack in the middle of my grad student career and learning to teach. But now, almost three decades later, it’s both familiar and utterly destabilizing. hooks's ideas are so intertwined with how progressive teaching is today that a lot of this doesn’t feel groundbreaking the way it was. But she is so smart and eye-opening on how she talks about the intersections between gender, race, class, and the classroom and teachers and students—it’s inspiring.