Reading bell hooks after her death remains enlightening, inspiring

“I came to theory because I was hurting ... I came to theory desperate, wanting to comprehend — to grasp what was happening around and within me,” bell hooks wrote in her 1991 essay “Theory as Liberatory Practice.”

bell hooks was a Black feminist, activist and writer whose cultural criticism and social analysis has made her a foundational proponent to feminist theory. hooks published more than 30 books, wrote countless articles and appeared in many interviews.

Throughout these works, hooks explored topics like race, feminism, patriarchy, capitalism, masculinity and imperialism — or more accurately, how all of these systems work together to construct our identities.

Born Gloria Jean Watkins, hooks grew up in segregation-era Kentucky and got her undergraduate degree in English from Stanford University, after which she continued her education with a master’s at the University of Wisconsin—Madison and her doctorate from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Her first major work, “Ain’t I A Woman? Black Women and Feminism” is considered to be one of the most influential pieces of feminist thought in the last 30 years. The book, along with hooks’ other bodies of work, moved feminism beyond a white, middle-class vision to a revolutionary ideology.

hooks borrowed her pen name from her great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks. Famously, hooks demanded that her pen name be spelled in all lowercase as a symbolic gesture, signaling that when she was writing about community and society, she wasn’t centering her own identity. 

She died on Dec. 15, 2021, at age 69 in Kentucky, surrounded by friends and family, and her legacy lives on not only through her loved ones but also through her work. Everyone can benefit from reading hooks because she wrote for all of us. Although dealing with complex issues and espousing revolutionary ideas, her works remain accessible to all.

Though all of hooks' works are worthwhile, here is a brief collection of her words that are particularly inspiring:

“Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism”

One cannot get a degree in a women’s studies degree program at an American university — or globally — without reading hooks at some point. Many departments require students to read “Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism,” a book hooks started writing as an undergraduate. hooks explores how Black women have been oppressed historically, drawing a link between the 17th century to the present.

Her book is a condemnation of the mainstream white, middle-class feminism of her day that saw gender and race as separate struggles — where race was completely ignored. Instead, hooks argued, gender and race work together to construct a person’s identity. This all may seem very obvious now, and in large part, that's thanks to hooks.

bell hooks in conversation with Charlotte Bunch and Marianne DeKoven in “Talking Leadership: Conversations with Powerful Women” edited by Mary S. Hartman 

This book consists of a series of transcribed interviews between feminists, featuring 13 women-identifying leaders who discuss leadership in their varying fields. The physical book, published by Rutgers University Press, is available at a number of Rutgers libraries.

One of the things hooks emphasizes in the interview is the importance of relating oneself to theory — and what that can be diluted to is the feminist quip, “the personal is political.” This is an uncommon approach to academia, as usually academics are required to take a distanced, non-judgemental tone when constructing theories.

As hooks said in "Talking Leadership: Conversations with Powerful Women," "the genius of feminist theory was its call on all of us not to be afraid, to utilize the confessional within a larger framework of the theoretical — not to abandon the theoretical for the confessional, or to privilege the confessional as an end in itself."

She also stressed that feminism is a discipline that requires self-reflection. There’s a difference, according to hooks, between self-actualization and selfishness.

Self-actualization “suggests that the self is something we have to create. We have to do that consciously and willfully; we are not inherently who we are, and our destinies do not simply unfold in a magic carpet kind of way… we must be ever mindful and thoughtful about where we want to go and who we want to be and what we want to do,” hooks said.

To hooks, mindful decisions and fate work together to forge our places in the world.

hooks also offers an anecdote of why she adopted her great-grandmother’s name: As a child, hooks said that she cursed a lot and was told that she reminded people of Bell Blair Hooks, who “apparently cursed like a sailor.”

"All About Love: New Visions"

What is love? Are there different kinds of love? How can love be a liberatory practice? “All About Love: New Visions” explores a significant tension in our society: The mind-numbing obsession with “love” as reflected in our pop culture and media systems, yet our staggering inability to define what love is.

hooks defines a range of definitions of love and ultimately concludes that it is love that has the ability to transform each of us as we navigate our personal relationships to ourselves and one another. But just as importantly, love will direct us to a future that ends “imperialist white supremacist heteropatriarchy.”

The book can be loaned from a Rutgers library here.

hooks is both the soft hand on our face that gently turns our head to both the great injustices of the world and also the never-ending love that exists in and around us. Her touch is assertive yet understanding, lacking in all pretense and powerfully accessible.

As we grieve her now, her words about death resonate. In conversation with digital activist and lyricist John Perry Barlow, hooks said, “I suppose I never think about death as an other side. Life is what’s on the other side. Life is what we can’t get back to because death is actually what we’re experiencing right now. Death is with you all the time. You get deeper in it as you move towards it, but it’s not unfamiliar to you. It’s always been there, so what becomes unfamiliar to you when you pass away from the moment is really life.” 

hooks is everlasting, alive. We make our pilgrimage to her in our pain as she once did to the theorists of her time, desperate to be understood and to be loved.