While there were no footnotes, her books were love notes to a people she loved fiercely. Her writing style hinted at the fact that her ideas were always more expansive than even her books could hold. Rejecting footnotes seemed to symbolize the fact that the knowledge hooks most valued could not fit into those tiny spaces. While her writing was deeply personal, often carved from her own experiences, her ideas were relentlessly rigorous and full of citations-even though she eschewed footnotes, another refusal of the academy's standards that endeared her to those of us determined to remake intellectual traditions that denied our very humanity. She also used language that was as plain and as clear as her politics.
The lower-case name bell hooks published under challenged a system of academic writing that historically belittled and ignored the work of Black scholars. She called on us to honor early pioneers such as Anna Julia Cooper and Mary Church Terrell, who first claimed the mantle of women's rights. She claimed feminism without apology, and encouraged Black women in particular to embrace feminism, and to do more than simply identify their oppression, but to envision new ways of being in the world. She helped us to better understand and, if necessary, forgive the women who birthed and raised us. She was a prolific writer, and her intellectual curiosity was boundless.ĭiscovering bell hooks changed the lives of countless Black women and girls.Īs we traversed hostile spaces in academia, corporate America, the arts, medicine and sometimes our own families, hooks not only taught us how to love ourselves, but also insisted that we seek justice. Her words garner just as much attention on the page. Her banter with the audience during the Q&A floated easily between thoughtful answers, deep questioning and sly quips that kept us at rapt attention. In the 1990s she blessed my college campus for a week, and I was mesmerized by lectures that were deliciously brilliant yet full of humor. If you ever heard hooks speak, it would come as no surprise that she first attended college to study drama, as she recounted in a 1992 essay. I've retrieved every bell hooks book today, and the unwieldy stack comforts me as I assess the impact of her loss. I doubt I would have survived this long without her work, and the work of other Black feminist thinkers of her generation, to guide me. She's in nearly every section – race, class, film, cultural studies – and, as expected, her books take up an entire shelf in the feminism section. There are well-worn bell hooks books scattered throughout my library. Arts & Life Trailblazing feminist author, critic and activist bell hooks has died at 69
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