Public Employee Press

Book Review
High barriers to the quest for equality and homes

In "Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home," Anita Hill weaves together personal memoirs, family histories, sociological analysis and above all, wonderful storytelling, to bring us into the quest for home as experienced by African American women from Reconstruction through the subprime mortgage tragedy.

In her new book, Hill moves beyond her 1991 battle with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and uses her skills as a scholar of American law, history, and culture to examine the meaning of home ownership and equality in America.

She says she was inspired to write this book by the thousands of letters she received in the wake of becoming a public figure when she testified in 1991 that as her supervisor in two previous jobs, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, had sexually harassed her. Hill's shocking, graphic testimony did not stop the U.S. Senate from approving Thomas by a historically narrow 52-48 vote, but it did raise public awareness about sex harassment in the workplace.

Placing issues of gender and race at the center of the story about the quest for home, Hill tells us of her family, recently emancipated from slavery, searching for a home where they wouldn't be subjected to terror, and her own journey from her roots in rural Oklahoma to the suburbs of Boston. She also recovers stories of African American women from history, recounting their struggles and using the contradictions and inequities to question the nation's commitment to the "American Dream." Included is the tragic story behind the story of Lorraine Hansberry's play, "A Raisin in the Sun," which centered on the Hansberry family's battle against housing segregation in Chicago.

Hill's examination of the foreclosure crisis that has victimized so many breaks new ground by showing how specific policies targeted African American women and revealing the roots of the crisis in the country's unmet housing needs and discriminatory mortgage policies. Her book carefully traces the roots and repercussions of those practices. Members can borrow the book from the DC 37 Ed Fund library, Room 211.

—Jane LaTour