On How to Stage a Homegirl Intervention: A Review of Brittney Cooper’s Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

On How to Stage a Homegirl Intervention: A Review of Brittney Cooper’s Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Sasha Panaram | @SashaPanaram | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
I want to begin this review of Brittney Cooper’s Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower where the book ends: with a benediction. In the final section of her book, Cooper gifts us with a blessing akin to the ones frequently invoked at the end of church services. As her own gift – the gift that is Eloquent Rage – concludes she wishes her readership joy. Joy, which she identifies as distinct from happiness, is linked to an internal sense of purpose and worth. Cooper’s own purpose – justice – is clear throughout and her benediction functions as an invitation to others to claim their purpose and pursue it fearlessly.   I start where Cooper ends because it is at the end of her text that our work begins if it has not already begun. It is at the end of her text where we coalesce as a community committed to calling out injustice in its many forms. It is at the end of her text that we recognize and reconcile our own feminist origin stories.
If we are reading carefully then on some level we know that, in truth, there is no end to Cooper’s manifesto because her words resonate beyond the limit of the page; her call carries forth indefinitely.
I start this review by attending to the benediction itself as a form and a send-off because its inclusion in the text offers critical insight into who Cooper is and how she came to be. An Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers University, Cooper is a Black, Southern woman from Ruston, Louisiana. Known by many as “Crunktastic” from her work as part of the Crunk Feminist Collective, a feminist of color scholar-activist group that operates a blog under the same name, Cooper insists on producing work outside the academy. More specifically, she rejects privileging Ivory Tower knowledge and looks to her community – one constituted particularly by Black women – as primary knowledge producers. Inspired by people including her grandmother, mother, aunts, cousins, and more who could imagine futures more capacious and forgiving not only for themselves but for all whom they encountered, Cooper regards these women as the original revolutionaries.  
In what has been described as a “homegirl intervention” since its publication in February 2018, Eloquent Rage interrogates a longstanding stereotype that associates Black women with anger. Seeking to unearth the root of this alleged anger and simultaneously name what in this cultural and political moment in the United States might infuriate Black women, Cooper treats rage as a political response.
Both intrigued and slightly offended by a former student, Erica, who told her that, “Your lectures were filled with rage. But it was, like, the most eloquent rage ever” Cooper initially balks at the accusation that her teaching was motivated by fury. It is only when Erica, a Black girl, goes on to say, “Brittney, you know you are angry” that she relents realizing that in this moment she can no longer hide (3). She is angry. She is frustrated. She is sassy. And what’s more is that Erica, a Black girl, sees her for what she is.
This moment of recognition that inspires the title of the book enables Cooper to critically explore the clarity and precision associated with rage especially when it is used to critique oppressive institutions. Erica’s comments, which emerge in the context of a compliment on Cooper’s teaching and scholarship, challenges her to reexamine this previously contested emotion as it emerges in the lives of Black women.  
It is important to understand that this book grows out of a place of recognition – out of being seen – because, in effect, part of what Cooper produces in Eloquent Rageis a compilation of stories that attend to Black women’s daily realities, struggles, and triumphs. In this way, it is readily accessible and instantly familiar to many who encounter it. Although not necessarily a memoir this book introduces us to various parts of Cooper’s upbringing that relate to her evolving understanding of Black feminism. This is a book about Judy Blume, the William sisters, her experience at Howard University, the Black church, white tears, her father, Beyoncé, Black sexuality, and more.
Joining a tradition of Black feminist texts including Audre Lorde’s “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism” in Sister Outsider, bell hook’s killing rage: Ending Racism, and Joan Morgan’s When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, among others, Cooper creates a framework that takes seriously the lived experiences of Black women and girls. Her book is not so much a validation of their experiences (they need no validation as they are valid in their own rights) as it is an acknowledgement of a singular truth Cooper holds dearly: “Friendships with Black girls have always saved my life” (13).
Indebted to the ways her own homegirls have called her out in dire moments, Cooper calls out America on its racist, sexist, patriarchal behavior. As if taking a cue from James Baldwin who famously said, “I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually” Cooper critiques this country so as to come up with concrete and collective solutions.  
Black feminism is incredibly complicated, messy, and sometimes contradictory and Cooper does not shy away from addressing these complications. But as she shows us Black feminism can also be deeply empowering especially when practiced in the company of others.
In asking throughout “how can we create worlds where Black women and girls thrive?” Cooper suggests that part of how we address glaringly apparent gaps and inadequacies in society is by dreaming otherwise, acting otherwise. It is by asking that very question in the first place and working to create real opportunities and answers.  
This world will not change on its own and certainly not in one day, but by engaging in and through rage together we can begin to see more clearly all of what ails our world and work to do away with it. In her own words, “Individualized acts of eloquent rage have limited reach. But the collective, orchestrated fury of Black women can move the whole world” (168).
And make no mistake Brittney Cooper is a mover and a shaker. If we can heed her call and get into formation we, too, can set this world spinning in new directions. Black feminism can and will save us all. We just have to believe in its capacity to do so and live by its tenets.
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Sasha Panaram (@SashaPanaram) is a Ph.D. student (ABD) in English at Duke University. A Georgetown University alumna, her scholarly interests are in Black diasporic literature, black feminisms, and visual cultures.