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bell hooks and my accountability Amy L. Reynolds, PhD It was 1982. During my first year of graduate school, I took a Women’s Studies course. That spring I was introduced to bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, Gloria Anzaldua, Adrienne Rich, Cherrie Moraga, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and so many others and my life was never the same again. Ain’t I a woman: Black women and feminism may have been the first book by bell hooks I read but it was definitely not the last. Her work and words became part of the women of color canon that has guided me ever since, holding me accountable for fighting racism every day. The recent passing of bell hooks has been quite unsettling in ways that other losses have not. It is hard to find the words to express how I feel. Mostly, it just seems impossible to imagine a world without her brilliant, deep, and complicated writing. Her loss has transported me back to the time when I was first introduced to her. As a white woman who identified as a feminist since high school, I thought I understood feminism till I saw it through bell’s eyes. Through Ain’t I a woman, I learned that the feminism I embraced was not inclusive and had perpetuated harm. She taught me about intersectionality before it had a name. It was an awakening. There was no turning back for me. My feminism/womanism became intersectional and anti-racist. She helped me see myself and my mission in a whole new way. “Women, all women, are accountable for racism continuing to divide us. Our willingness to assume responsibility for the elimination of racism need not be engendered by feelings of guilt, moral responsibility, victimization, or rage. It can spring from a heartfelt desire for sisterhood and the personal, intellectual realization that racism among women undermines the potential radicalism of feminism.” (p. 388). After reading Ain’t I a woman, I eagerly awaited each new book. I devoured them and sat in awe of her incisive, honest, and captivating prose and poetry. Little did I know that her words would guide me to and through the most powerful anti-racist feminist space I ever experienced with Women Against Racism in Iowa City. Her words helped me move my feminism from belief to action. She inspired me to develop a practice that I carry with me today. In Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking Black, she said, “All efforts at self-transformation challenge us to engage in on-going, critical self-examination and reflection about feminist practice, and about how we live in the world. This individual commitment, when coupled with engagement in collective discussion, provides a space for critical feedback which strengthens our efforts to change and make ourselves anew” (p. 24). This is the world I’d always imagined. Then there was Teaching to Transgress. I was transfixed the first time I read this book. This book was a revelation. Every few years, I re-read this book to inspire me to double down on making my classroom a place of freedom. bell hooks had a way of taking complex ideas or practices, like teaching, and making them simple. Reading her words is always transformative, in a full body kind of way. “The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy” (p. 126). If all of us taught with that in mind, we truly could make graduate school a liberatory space. And finally, just when I thought I knew who bell hooks was; she began to teach me about love as the way to liberation. When I was younger, I thought being an intersectional anti-racist feminist was about the fight (and it still is), but bell hooks was the first to write about the role of love in the struggle. “Without love, our efforts to liberate ourselves and our world community from oppression and exploitation are doomed. As long as we refuse to address fully the place of love in struggles for liberation, we will not be able to create a culture of conversion where there is a mass turning away from an ethic of domination” (hooks, 2006, p. 243). And that’s when it hit me. The passing of bell hooks has been so unsettling because she wasn’t just an author to me. I feel like I lost a member of my family…someone who has been part of my life for almost 40 years. Yet I also know that as much as I have revered bell hooks, she was the product of and a beacon for Black women. My partner, my daughter, and all the other Black women I know, and love feel her loss in a way I can never know. Her words, her courage, her legacy are theirs, shining a light for their survival. For me, she opened the door to accountability, humility, and commitment. Luckily, all of us have her ethic of love to bring us together, an unbelievable inheritance and a guidepost for our lives. References hooks, b. (1981). “Ain’t I a woman? Black women and feminism. NY: Routledge. hooks, b. (1984). Feminist theory from margin to center. NY: Routledge. hooks, b. (1989). Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking Black. NY: Routledge. hooks, b. (1993). Sisters of the Yam. NY: Routledge. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. NY: Routledge. hooks, b. (2003). Teaching community: A pedagogy of hope. NY: Routledge. hooks, b. (2006). Outlaw culture: Resisting representations. NY: Routledge. Tags: bell hooks; counseling; leadership; reflections |
