biographies

This is an extraordinary book. Through the use of a wide array of reasoning and writing methods, Williams makes it possible for us to get a glimpse of the dangerous and contradictory legal world that ethnic minorities must negotiate to survive. It may be a bit of a stretch for people unaccustomed to thinking outside the box as well as those unfamilar with literature and literary theory. But the insight Williams offers is well worth the effort. It also provides members of the privileged class with the unusual & valuable experience of not being the central focus of the text. A fabulous experience for readers with an open mind!

A great deal of discourse has come out of the use of this book in my law class on the interaction of law in society, but I find it's use counter-productive to the forward-thinking goals of most academic institutions. Prof. Williams cannot seem to make up her mind on anything. She attacks Marxist lawyers, while at the same time advocating an affront to the bourgeoise, especially those without black skin (whites, Hispanics and Asians are all vilified to some degree in this book). While masquerading as a socialist activist herself, she then advocates a very right-wing goal of keeping each other in our respective racial boxes to keep order, even refusing to accept that she herself can be at once black, female and educated -- these three identities always appear separately for her. Her book is a regressive look at the future that denies the possibility of progress in race and gender relations. She is sadly unable to employ the power in her rights and instead prefers to wallow in a viscious cycle that refuses to recognize nuance, and prefers rather to assume racial categories, because they are simpler. Very few new ideas are presented in this racist, ethnically intolerant and misandric text and it is hardly worth a read, beyond the fact that it may come up in discussion.

What a dreary tome. Ms. Professor Williams has a unique ability to obscure the most obvious and trite revelations in pedantic and turgid prose that she thinks is thrillingly poetic because the words are long-winded and flowery. and that's when she's making sense, which isn't very often. the rest of her writings tend to be either outright calls for more preferences for her preferred friends camouflaged as courageous iconoclasm, or just plain idiocy posing as intellectually daring originality. Sadly enough, if Thomas Kuhn is right, we'll have the likes of Professor Pat around for another couple of decades. (But hey, if you have the money, you can always sign up for the Nation's annual cruise and talk about the revolution with Pat and the gang for a mere 8 grand or so....)