bell hooks.Photo: Margaret Thomas/The The Washington Post via Getty
“The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself,” bell hooks wrote inCommunion: The Search for Female Love. “Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin.”
The renowned author, culture-changing feminist and critic died on Wednesday at the age of 69. hook’s sister, Gwenda Motleytold theNew York Timesshe died as a result of end-stage renal failure.
Since news of hooks' passing was announced, her readers, former students and colleagues have turned to her words for comfort.
“The passing of bell hooks hurts, deeply. At the same time, as a human being I feel so grateful she gave humanity so many gifts,” wrote author Ibram X. Kendi in amulti-part tweeton Wednesday. “AIN’T I A WOMAN: BLACK WOMEN AND FEMINISM is one of her many classics. And ALL ABOUT LOVE changed me. Thank you, bell hooks. Rest in our love.”
“Our nation lost a prolific author, activist, and trailblazer. bell hooks' profound and positive influence will be with us for generations to come. May she rest in power,“wrote Vice President Kamala Harrison Twitter on Wednesday.
“It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement,” hooks wrote inAin’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, “but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation I choose to re-appropriate the term ‘feminism’, to focus on the fact that to be ‘feminist’ in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression.”
Most recently, hooks worked as professor at Berea College in Kentucky, where there is a bell hooks center in celebration of her legacy.
Routledge
“The bell hooks Institute at Berea College will continue to be a valuable and informative beacon to her life’s work, continuing to remind humans that life is all about love,” reads astatement from the collegethat was posted after her death.
“Gloria learned to read and write at an early age and even proclaimed she would be famous one day,” hooks' family shared in a statement on Wednesday. “Growing up, the girls shared an upstairs bedroom and she would always keep the light on well into the night. Every night we would try to sleep but the sounds of her writing or page turning caused us to yell down to Mom to make her turn the light off.”
From early on, hooks was a voracious reader, the Watkins family explains.
“There were many summer days that Gloria led the walk to the public library to checkout books. While Valeria and Gwenda would find one or two Nancy Drew or other fun books, Gloria always had at least ten books of a more serious nature (Shakespeare,Little Women, and other classics),” the statement continues. “With her intense love for information, her ability to speed read was perfected. We will always remember Gloria as having a great thirst for knowledge, which she incorporated into her life’s work.”
She taught at various universities across the U.S. before rising to prominence as a celebrated intellectual and activist. Cornel West recognized her prowess as a radical thinker on Twitter.
“This sad season of massive deaths is nearly killing me! From my precious Mom to five eulogies in one week, and now my very dear sister bell hooks!” Cornel tweeted on Wednesday. “She was an intellectual giant, spiritual genius & freest of persons! We shall never forget her!”
West is far from the only one who will remember hooks. Her impact on fellow authors — including Min Jin Lee, who wrote a2019Timesessayabout her — is great.
In 1987, hooks was working at Yale University when Lee, now a bestselling author, took two of her classes, “Introduction to African-American Literature” and “Black Women and Their Fiction,” according to herTimesessay, “In Praise of bell hooks.” hooks didn’t assign her own books, so some of her students sought them out at the local bookstore.
When Lee readAin’t I a Woman?for the first time, it changed her perspective, she writes.
“For me, readingAin’t I A Woman?was as if someone had opened the door, the windows, and raised the roof in my mind,” Lee writes in her essay. “I am neither white nor black, but through her theories, I was able to understand that my body contained historical multitudes and any analysis without such a measured consideration was limited and deeply flawed.”
At the end of the essay, she explains thatAin’t I a Woman?“allowed me to recognize the dignity and power of living privately and publicly as an immigrant feminist of color.”
She continues: “At the time, I did not yet know of Kimberle Crenshaw’s brilliant term ‘intersectionality,’ or Claudia Rankine’s vital concept ‘racial imaginary’ — complementary and significant theories for understanding present day lives, but as a young woman, through hooks’s work, I was just beginning to see that everyone needs theory, and we need it like water.”
source: people.com
