Summary outline for “Keeping Close to Home” by bell hooks
Topic: Staying connected with family and community while pursuing higher education
Thesis: Bell hooks’ essay “Keeping Close to Home” argues that it is important to maintain one’s family and community ties as one pursues higher education, whether as a student or a teacher.
Major Details (main points in each section)
Section 1: Intro—Hooks describes her own painful departure for college 1st time; her parents were ambivalent about her leaving, and her intellectual ambitions made her departure painful.
Section 2: Bottom of 33 – top of 35
Main Idea: Class differences create invisible barriers that divide working class students from other collegians.
· Hooks was afraid to discuss her shame
· felt separated from all the other students
· did not share “the sensibility and values of her peers” (134).
Section 3: Top of 35 – 1st paragraph on 36
Main Idea: By sharing resources and building strong community, black people have created their own values in opposition to those of the privileged; however, the media make the less privileged feel they should assimilate the values of the priveledged.
--telling of one’s personal story helps maintain community
Section 4: 36 – 38
Main Idea: If educated working class people want to be understood in their home communities, t...
