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Hood

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Hood

By: Alison Kinney
Narrated by: Rachel Handshaw
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About this listen

Bloomsbury presents Hood by Alison Kinney, read by Rachel Handshaw.

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

We all wear hoods: the Grim Reaper, Red Riding Hood, torturers, executioners and the executed, athletes, laborers, anarchists, rappers, babies in onesies, and anyone who’s ever grabbed a hoodie on a chilly day. Alison Kinney’s Hood explores the material and symbolic vibrancy of this everyday garment and political semaphore, which often protects the powerful at the expense of the powerless—with deadly results. Kinney considers medieval clerics and the Klan, anti-hoodie campaigns and the Hooded Man of Abu Ghraib, the Inquisition and the murder of Trayvon Martin, uncovering both the hooded perpetrators of violence and the hooded victims in their sights.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

©2016 Alison Kinney (P)2025 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Aesthetics Anthropology Beauty, Grooming & Style Literary History & Criticism Media Studies Philosophy Social Sciences

Critic reviews

Alison Kinney’s Hood ... deftly maps the historical facts behind hooding (and, oh my, there are so many hoods!) and also untangles our past to demonstrate how people in positions of power frequently subvert ideas of right and wrong, normal and suspicious, law-abiding and criminal in order to maintain and even strengthen their power. ... The Object Lesson series, published by Bloomsbury Press, covers a wide range of topics: driver’s license, drone, phone booth, hotel, cigarette lighter, bread, eye chart, etc. And like all of them, Kinney’s book takes us on a long historical journey—religious hoods, famous hooded characters, costume and fashion hoods, hoods that look cool, hoods that keep us warm, brand-name hoods, hijabs, burkinis, Masonic hoods, KKK hoods. ... Hood, ultimately, is the map that shows us how we arrived at our racial troubles today; it’s a historical lesson that calls us to action. By reading it, we participate in the movement against racial hatred. (Leslie Jill Patterson, Texas Tech University, USA)
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