In Memoriam: bell hooks
I was first introduced to bell hooks’ writing almost 2 decades ago when I was an undergraduate student at a small, private, liberal arts college in Northampton, Massachusetts. During a seminar on feminism and education, I devoured assigned excerpts from Teaching to Transgress: Education as the practice of freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994) late on a frigid, Friday night, while young women bustled to and from the communal bathrooms, preparing themselves for off-campus parties at a neighboring University. To be honest, it took a lot for me to not join them in the pre-party primping, but every time I arrived at what seemed like a good stopping point, I felt called to turn just one more page, keep reading, and snuggle into the warmth of my twin sized, college dorm-room comfortert, while DMX blasted from my downstairs neighbor’s 6-cd-sound system. That night I read Teaching to Transgress in its entirety, dog-earing the pages for bathroom and snack breaks, respectively.
Most of my undergraduate experience included wondering on a daily basis if I was the only one in class who hadn’t “gotten the memo.” By this I mean, I was educated in the positivist landscape that was public school. I was a “good student” because I was well-behaved, asked the right kind of questions, raised my hand before speaking and didn’t abuse the use of the laminated bathroom pass. When I arrived at college–my first private school experience–I was acutely aware that the other women in my classes seemed well-versed in the writing and thinking of bell hooks, Angela Davis, Joy James and Audre Lorde. I was not familiar with their work, and carried with me the silent shame associated with what I would intimately know as imposter syndrome.
Bell hooks changed my life. Two decades after imbibing Teaching to Transgress rather than Magic Hat from a keg, I am a professor of education at a small, private, liberal arts school on the West Coast. My course syllabi, no matter what the content, include multiple writings by hooks–some for inspiration, some for shock, some for comfort. She writes, “any classroom that employs a holistic model of learning, will also be a place where teachers grow and be empowered by the process” (Teaching to Transgress, 21). Like any well-respected mentor, she joins my classes, helping us to navigate challenging conversations, generously giving us the words–her words–to claim our space as students, teachers, transgressive educators, critical thinkers, works in progress.
The semester our nation went into quarantine, my students sent me a locally-made tshirt with an iconic screen-printed image of bell hooks. The day that bell hooks passed away, my phone blew up from texts and phone calls from students–past and present–asking me if I had heard the news, asking if I was okay. The truth was I wasn’t okay. Her abrupt death felt similar to the death of my grandmother, 2 years prior; Gutting, ungrounding, leaving me with one less matriarch to turn to for trustworthy answers to my unending questions about racism, (hetero)sexism, classism, and all things intersectional feminism.
Bell hooks had the gift of calling people out (yes, even Queen Beyonce received her unwavering criticism) but in the calling out, there was always an invitation to look inward, to unpack through a self-reflexive, intersectional lens that inevitably led us back to our respective lived experiences, our privileges, and undeniably, the white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy. Hooks writes, “multiculturalism compels educators to recognize the narrow boundaries that have shaped the way knowledge is shared in the classroom. It forces us all to recognize our complicity in accepting and perpetuating biases of any kind” (Teaching to Transgress, 46).
I am the teacher that I am today because of bell hooks. I am the mother that I am today because of bell hooks. I am the scholar that I am today because of bell hooks. I am the feminist that I am today because of bell hooks. Bell hooks gave me permission to step into my intuitive, academic self. She modeled to me through her writing and public speaking that we don’t have to compartmentalize our spiritual selves from our academic selves, our sexual selves from our political selves. Bell hooks empowered me, and so many other educators, committed to social and educational justice, to claim our identities and carry the unapologetic message that there is always work to be done, and with open eyes and open hearts, we can and will do the work together.