This Black History Month, I’m sharing art, songs, movies, and other creative expressions from and about Black women that spark joy for me. Because Black women are often not remembered for their contributions, I thought this would be one way to give flowers to those who inspire me.
For Day 19, I’m spotlighting author bell hooks.
bell hooks was born in 1952 in Kentucky, and wrote over 40 books. bell hooks is her chosen pen name, bell’s great-grandmother’s name. She chose that name because she admired her great-grandmother’s “snappy and bold tongue.” bell hooks wrote her pen name in lowercase to both honor her great-grandmother and encourage the reader to focus on her work, not the writer.
One of the topics hooks is most famous for is her extensive writing on the importance of having a love ethic as a principle for achieving social justice. In her essay, "Love as a Practice of Freedom," hooks explains why love is a central part of the work:
"Often, the longing is not for a collective transformation of society, an end to politics of dominations, but rather simply for an end to what we feel is hurting us. This is why we desperately need an ethic of love to intervene in our self-centered longing for change. Fundamentally, if we are only committed to an improvement in that politic of domination that we feel leads directly to our individual exploitation or oppression, we not only remain attached to the status quo but act in complicity with it, nurturing and maintaining those very systems of domination. Until we are all able to accept the interlocking, interdependent nature of systems of domination and recognize specific ways each system is maintained, we will continue to act in ways that undermine our individual quest for freedom and collective liberation struggle."
To address this challenge bell hooks calls for a love ethic, meaning we must be committed to our collective liberation. As Audre Lorde said, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” A love ethic allows us to be invested in dismantling oppression for all. In the Love as a Practice of Freedom essay, hooks says, “Choosing love we also choose to live in community, and that means that we do not have to change by ourselves. We can count on critical affirmation and dialogue with comrades walking a similar path.” If we can find our way to love and struggle together, we can find our way to collective liberation.
Thank you, bell hooks, for your wisdom and for teaching us the importance of love as a practice for our freedom!
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