We Real Cool

We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity is a 2004 book about masculinity by feminist author bell hooks. It collects ten essays on black men. The title alludes to Gwendolyn Brooks’ 1959 poem “We Real Cool”. The essays are intended to provide cultural criticism and solutions to the problems she identifies.

Hooks suggests that black men are forced to repress themselves in white America. She suggests the ways in which racist and sexist attitudes developed in American culture have criminalized and dehumanized black men, and the ways in which these myths have harmed the black community. Hooks states that she believes that hip-hop as a whole strongly reflects imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.