In “Rebel’s Dilemma” bell hooks describes her “struggle to break from the impositions of images that don’t represent [her] accurately or well” as a black woman both in “the homefront and in the public world”(1).  The struggle, she states, is “the process of decolonization”(1). 

This idea is new for me.  When I think of colonialism, I perceive it as people from one place building a colony in another place for some specific purpose.  The new settlers bring their culture, traditions and beliefs with them which inevitably have an effect on the existing people.  If the colonizers have significant power and resources, they may even impose their rule and way of life on the people by force.  Seemingly, Bell likens the effect of oppression and racism of minority groups in the United States to that of colonization.

Hook’s argument brings us back to the question of whether a person from one culture can adequately describe and/or represent the people’s beliefs and ways of being in another culture.   She says, “I’ve grown accustomed to being looked at through a narrow lens by most folks”(1).  Hook contemplates why she keeps hanging out with the white “hippi” guy who I assume represents the male, white-dominated academy of the university where she works.  It seems she is constantly being misrepresented and misunderstood.   

Said and Lu examine the “narrow lens” by which Asian cultures have been minimalized by Western scholars and popular media.  I suppose it can be argued that African American women are victims of minimalization by the very same intities, and as a result are relegated to the bottom of the totem pole, so to speak, of the cultural power continuum.  But, as an individual, hook does not accept the base position and is “seeking to become self-actualized” rather than relegated. 

Although hook stretches the conceptual realm of colonization, her analogy zeros in on the parallels between her struggles to break the stereotypes imposed upon her and others, and the Western ideologies imposed on colonized peoples.