For bell hooks, the best cultural criticism sees no need to separate politics from the pleasure of reading.
Yearning
collects together some of hooks's classic and early pieces of cultural criticism from the '80s. Addressing topics like pedagogy, postmodernism, and politics, hooks examines a variety of cultural artifacts, from Spike Lee's film
Do the Right Thing
and Wim Wenders's film
Wings of Desire
to the writings of Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison. The result is a poignant collection of essays which, like all of hooks's work, is above all else concerned with transforming oppressive structures of domination.