 | | 12-16-2021, 02:39 AM |
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#62
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Fan Forum Legend
Joined: Aug 2016
Posts: 594,700
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Quote:
Rest in Power, bell hooks.
On this day that marks the passing of an icon — a luminary and a leader — I’d like to share some of the words written by friend (and icon in her own right) Dream Hampton, for @time. And I will say my prayers of thanks for all that we’ve learned by reading ms. hooks’ words.
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From Dream: “bell hooks was a radical feminist, a scholar and author who spent the ‘90s publishing about a book a year. She was a poet, a mentor, a professor and an icon whose influence is immeasurable. When I was 19 and began talking back to hip-hop in my own essays and articles, I’d cite her again and again. I fought to have my name published in lowercase letters like hers. I wanted to be incisive and battle-ready when I wrote.
Like a lot of young Black women I knew, I thought of myself as part of her army. Daughters of her thought, ready to integrate her text and thinking into our public and personal lives. Her seminal Ain’t I A Woman was a field guide toward a liberation that not only considered gender but centered it. Like the Black feminist scholars who’d informed her, giants like Audre Lorde, bell was producing work that provided tools. She refused to take on white supremacy without interrogating patriarchy. She went deep and wide with rigor and wit. She made bulletproof arguments that pushed us past rhetoric and toward real freedom … She was unafraid to burn it all down. To begin again.”
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Perhaps because, as bell hooks wrote, “we still believe in love’s promise.”
Because if we believe in all that love promises — all that it shows us we can be and claim and love? Shouldn’t we risk it all? Fight to the end. For that? For love.
When your love, and its ideas, leaves ripples in the universe so big that they’re seismic? You’ve changed generations. What a life.
RIP, bh 🕊
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