The "year with bell hooks" Project: Letter #014

today would have been bell hooks 70th birthday

Today is bell hooks’ 70th birthday. Keeping with our “year will bell hooks” project, I reflect on the question posed by Black Women Radicals, “what has bell hooks taught you?” A warm welcome to our new readers, and thank you to each of you for being in this space.

image description: a journal entry of my reflections on bell hooks’ 70th birthday.

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.

I felt that it was at that point 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. 

image description: a photo of myself holding the book “Sisters of the Yam": Black women and self-recovery”

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image description: my collection of bell hooks’ works that I have and the two additional books at the bottom of the stack that have her works included.

To be healed, in a way that commits to struggle, remains in pursuit for 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. 

But, I’ve also found hooks’ life, teaching, and being that remove blinders on the realities of this world. That hooks isn’t (and it’s a disservice to deduce her to) one that only teaches and promotes love in a romantic-commodified/co-opted sense. 

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image description: a paragraph snippet from bell hooks’ book“Remembered Rapture: the Writer at Work”

This love embodies commitment and is the merging of Spirit and self. Love speaks the truth- relentlessly, love conjures, manifests, actualizes, guides, and radically revolutionizes ourselves and our world. 

Love is a daily practice, coming against forces of domination, power, abuse, and all that do not make us well. 

I will forever be indebted to bell hooks and the black feminists who have saved my life - most 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. 

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What has bell hooks taught you?