Today is bell hooks’ 71st birthday! I hold her as a literary ancestor in my creativity and spiritual practice, and, in my moments of remembering her today, I’m sharing parts of my reflections about her from this post, here.
I first began to seriously engage with bell hooks in & outside the classroom when I came across Toni Cade Bambara’s infamous quote in The Salt Eaters, “just so’s you’re sure, sweetheart and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you are well.” Her book, Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery, has been a sacred, healing read for me lately.
At that point, I felt that her words conjured the unspoken desires of my heart. To be well, not in a shallow aesthetic manner, but in a way that I know myself, am not afraid of myself, and journey towards the roots of my essence.
To be healed, in a way that commits to struggle, [nestles in community], remains in pursuit of life and life more abundantly, that affirms the beauty of the complex soul. Reading the words and works of hooks has made me feel safe in my body, and I am grateful for the day-to-day tending of making a home within me.
I will forever be indebted to bell hooks and the Black feminists who have saved my life – literally. They are a balm in the heaviest of seasons and a breath of fresh air in the lightest of moments. I pray for continued perfect peace as she rests. I so wish that she would have lived more years here. And for all the black feminists that have left this realm too soon.
May the memory of her and those who have journeyed on invigorate and sharpen those of us who remain.
So much has happened since then. I grew deeper in my study of her literary legacy; I presented part of my research – Holy Exorcisms at the 2023 Inaugural bell hooks Symposium in Berea College, KY, back in June and successfully defended my thesis “Standing on Demonic Grounds” that came to life from her writings.
deathdoulasfortheliving is an emerging phrase that has been swirling in my mind for the past two and half years as, again, I will never not think about my Mother and her death at the age of 36 and spending my time focused on the life story of Tabitha in Acts 9:36-42. I hold these two women as guideposts, lessons, and warnings.
Mother/ing, wombs, death, grief & love, re/birth, and all in-between have been the words accompanying deathdoulasfortheliving. For me, this has been a time of holding on to the importance of remembering and doing Black women’s cultural work, memory/memory keeping, and grieving as a way to give space for their lives, their stories, and what their legacies mean.
I keep coming back to the same thing: what does it mean to have life and life more abundantly – especially for Black women, our Mothers, and the Mothers who don’t live long enough to see their children grow? For Black women who weren’t able to have girlhood and Black girls who were forced into womanhood? I’m thinking about the spaces/institutions/worship centers/homes + people who made these fractured experiences happen so they can keep power.
In this space, deathdoulasfortheliving are Black cultural workers committed to caring for and keeping what has been left behind by those who have crossed to the other side. Tending to our stories, keeping their memories and descriptions of them alive, embodying their essence in the everyday. Doing recovery work. Invoking cultural memory.
Doulas stay, remain, and tend to the entire process of birth. They are there before, during, and after, so I’m working out what it means to be a death doula for the living when death is an unexpected expected presence for Black people across the diaspora daily. Where is the tending before, during, and after?
Myisha Priest, in “Salvation is the Issue,” speaks to how (one of) the roles of the Black woman cultural worker is through illuminating and sounding the alarm about how Black women’s premature deaths are a cultural, political, and economic issue, but also how it’s a problem that there’s a common thread of Black women cultural workers who are also dying prematurely.
I add how the premature deaths of Black Christian women are a created reality by the Christian church to sustain itself and is a religious/spiritual issue. All are breaches in our possibility to live.
deathdoulasfortheliving tends to the death stories of our dead. Why and how did they die? What could have been prevented? How do we stop this from happening? This is why, from Tabitha’s story, I will never let go of how the Christian world sees Black women as labor items/commodities to keep itself expanding.
In the next letter, I’ll go further with “deathdoulasfortheliving.” I’m curious about the significance of Tabitha’s forced resurrection (seen below), if forced resurrections of Black women still happen today, what Kimberly Juanita Brown means with “The Repeating Body,” and what are the blueprints left behind by some of our revolutionary Black Feminist pathmakers.
Amazing read! When I first read the title before diving into the article I thought deathdoulasfortheliving was a play on - Death Thou Last For The Living. That captivated me, I would like to know if it was intentional