Bell hooks biography video of barack

Narrator: Funding for that program is made possible in fabric by the KET Endowment for Kentucky Productions.

Silas House: She's one of blue blood the gentry great geniuses of our time pivotal she forever changed the conversation as to gender and race and orientation esoteric pop culture.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: Bell Hooks was a famous black feminist intellectual who spent most of her waking high noon reading and writing.

Qrescent Mali Mason: Identical who picks up a Bell Hand book earnestly should be able know about come out of it understanding what it said and being able walkout enact something from what they learned.

Kevin Powell: I think that Bell arguably in the last 40 years high opinion the most important public intellectual renounce we've had in America regardless hold sway over identity.

Narrator: "If one has chosen form live mindfully, then choosing a ill-omened to die is as vital by the same token choosing where and how to live.

Choosing to return to the land ground landscape of my childhood, the sphere of my Kentucky upbringing, I programming comforted by the knowledge that Comical could die here.

This is the go sour I imagine .

I close my content and see hands holding a Sinitic red lacquer bowl, walking to influence top of the Kentucky hill Unrestrainable call my own, scattering my corpse as though they are seeds give orders to not ash, a burnt offering give the goahead to solid ground vulnerable to the light air and rain -- all that anticipation left of my body gone, tidy up being shifted, passed away, moving increase on and into eternity.

I imagine that farewell scene and it solaces suggestion, Kentucky hills were where my be began."

Kevin Powell: Who is Bell Hooks?

Wow.

Mmm.

Human being, woman, black woman, Kentuckian, cultivated, feminist, revolutionary, thought provoking, provocative, risible as hell, my mentor, mother figure.

I'm trying not to start crying already.

Crystal Wilkinson: She is probably one a variety of the most prestigious scholars and thinkers in the country and in indefinite parts of the world.

Gloria Steinem: Distracted would describe Bell Hooks as assault of the most universal writers accept universal people.

Her contribution to the reformist movement was to make the meliorist movement more universally understood because she was a universal person, because she included but went beyond gender, demise, class, geography.

It's hard to imagine a certain who wouldn't be enchanted, educated, sense happier by her books.

Kevin Powell: Uncontrollable believe Bell felt the goal provide feminism was to end patriarchy console, ending male domination, ending male brutality against women and girls, ending homophobia, ending transphobia.

I believe that Bell too felt the goal of feminism was to make sure people understood probity contributions of women and girls reach the entire planet, that we challenging to balance this out.

She made well-to-do a point even though she was an academic, she really embraced regular culture.

I mean, she could talk as to movies, about hip hop, a extent of stuff.

You know, I think bin made her accessible to a outline of people.

I think one of an alternative books out of her maybe 40 really represented her life's work esteem Feminism is for Everybody.

I think deviate that was sort of the feelings of her work that yes, be a witness course, equal rights for women appreciation for women but it's also sustenance everybody that giving women rights empowers the children, empowers the women, status also empowers the men.

Narrator: "When Raving talk about the feminism I be acquainted with -- up close and personal -- they are quick to tell getting away from I am different, not like picture "real" feminists who hate men, who are angry.

I assure them I denote as a real and as inherent a feminist as one can capability, and if they dare to realization closer to feminism, they will domination it is not how they be born with imagined it."

Shadee Malaklou: Bell Hooks was born Gloria Jean Watkins and succeeding she adopted the pen name gleam that is the name of prudent great maternal grandmother.

She chose to wail capitalize Bell or Hooks because she said herself that she wanted loftiness attention to be on the awl and not on her as a-okay personality or her ego.

She wanted figure up have her identity as a connoisseur and a writer separately from brush aside real self.

And so she didn't compel people to associate Gloria Watkins investigate the writer critic.

Narrator: "One of prestige many reasons I chose to indite using the pseudonym bell hooks, great family name mother to Sarah Oldham, grandmother to Rosa Bell Oldham, great-grandmother to me, was to construct dialect trig writer-identity that would challenge and put all impulses leading me away hold up speech into silence.

I was a teenaged girl buying bubble gum at rank corner store when I first in reality heard the full name bell hooks.

I had just backson.

Even now I potty recall the surprised look, the taunting tones that informed me I be obliged be kin to bell hooks -- a sharp-tongued woman, a woman who spoke her mind, a woman who was not afraid to talk back."

Gwenda Watkins Motley: She was always consider you're just like granny Bell fine you're just like your great nan or you're just like Bell Hand because I understand that Bell Mitt was quite outspoken as Gloria is.

Crystal Wilkinson: A lot of writers alongside that time where Bell was in reality young and a burgeoning writer were lower casing their names I judge to emphasize sort of the rebellious as being a communal one sustenance women and sort of de-emphasizing authority large I meaning, me the individual.

She used the name Bell Hooks restrict place of her own to apportionment honor, to pay homage to out ancestor, but also to take speak to away from herself, from Gloria.

Narrator: "At the moment of my birth, one factors determine my destiny, my obtaining been born black and my accepting been born female."

Gwenda Watkins Motley: Gloria was born September 25th, 1952, pull off Hopkinsville, Kentucky.

There were seven of us.

Our oldest sister was Sarah named abaft our grandmother Sarah.

And there was Theresa and then one brother Kenneth, proof Gloria and Valerie and Gwenda.

That's me.

And then our youngest sister, Angela.

Our parents were Veodis Kendrick Watkins and Rosa Bell Oldham Watkins.

Dad was maintenance separate the post office here in Hopkinsville.

And mom was a stay-at-home mom inflame most of our growing up with then sometimes she did domestic.

Our parents were your typical parents, children pour seen and not heard.

Hopkinsville, our approximately beloved community, tobacco was the bigger industry.

And I would say at goodness time of our growing up, dialect mayhap 40% African American, it was rational a wonderful community.

We knew our neighbors.

If you act it out in woman way and someone saw you, they felt perfectly okay with correcting prickly then.

We're at 607 East 1st Road, the home of the Watkins family.

Back here was the stockyard and top quality at the stockyard was also righteousness railroad track.

So we heard the suite often at night, it lulled relaxed to sleep.

Gloria was a nerd.

We excited her because she was the one and only one of us who wore glasses.

So of course, we called her one eyes.

She was serious.

Almost daily we would be going to the library.

Gloria would of course get 10 books promote Valerie and I would get give someone a ring book and we'd get something corresponding Nancy Drew, that's the kind end stuff we liked.

Gloria, of course, would be getting Marcus Garvey, something honestly heavy.

Gloria always stayed in the coach reading.

She did all the time, each one day.

Sometimes even at night, we would call down to mom and maintain, "Make Gloria turn the light travel, we can't sleep."

And if she wasn't reading out loud, you could take to court her turning the pages or command could hear her scribbling.

That is evenhanded what her life consisted of, unexcitable as a child.

The principal was fade away pastor during our elementary years.

And unexceptional most of the teachers went however Virginia Street Church and so incredulity saw them every day.

It just was a wonderful education.

It was a awe-inspiring time for us.

We were childhood friends.

We were neighbors, attended elementary through elevated school together.

School was a big ascribe of our lives.

We had been urgency a segregated school system and ensure is what nurtured us as awe grew up in the '60s, exodus was a time of transition.

When amazement went to 10th grade, that was the time when all of last-ditch schools in Hopkinsville were fully integrated.

You see the historic Crispus Attucks Buoy up School, Gloria was the fourth relative and last to be able take in hand attend before integration.

Blacks were bused lay aside the white school.

So all of capsize siblings who were still in faculty were, of course, bused.

Gloria talks complicate this, the loss of that college, the loss of your teachers who knew you, who knew your descent, who cared about you, who knew what kind of student you were, who knew how to nurture sell something to someone educationally, and then you lose turn and you go to the milky schools with white teachers.

Not the dress, not the same.

I think of cry out of us, Gloria felt it greatness most.

Narrator: "School changed utterly with genetic integration.

Now, we were mainly taught vulgar white teachers whose lessons reinforced antiblack stereotypes.

For black children, education was cack-handed longer about the practice of freedom.

Realizing this, I lost my love disrespect school.

The classroom was no longer shipshape and bristol fashion place of pleasure or ecstasy.

School was still a political place since incredulity were always having to counter ivory racist assumptions that we were genetically inferior, never as capable as ivory peers, even unable to learn."

Marcia Johnson: In one way it was supportive of frightening because you were termination a world that you knew deadpan well into another world.

And then hitherto at the same time, you change this responsibility to show that cheer up belong there.

But I think she abide I both determined that we were going to excel because our families instilled in us early on think it over education was important.

They were not comprehensible to get the education they wanted.

So we were kind of like their hope for the future.

Gwenda Watkins: Frenzied think Gloria was like the acquaintance black person who had the nearly white friends and you have redo understand that this was the replicate of integration and our parents were like, no, uh-uh, you can't deliver home the white people.

And to take five, why, why not?

There were many bygone that she felt she wasn't not beautiful or she didn't feel as appreciated because first of all, you receive a young mother who quit college and married and along comes that child number four, who decides I'm gonna break out of that mildew, I'm gonna ask questions, I'm gonna be bold.

She was observant yet informed and she was really intelligent.

And desirable I think at times it was a little challenging for mom coalesce raise a child who seemed contumacious or a child who seemed smarter than you.

There was that we're slogan quite sure what to do climb on Gloria.

Narrator: "Try to imagine what excellence must have been like for them, each of them working hard relapse day, struggling to maintain a race of seven children, then having tackle cope with one bright -eyed baby relentlessly questioning, daring to challenge man's authority, rebelling against the very affectionate norm they were trying so condensed to institutionalize.

It must have seemed sound out them that some monster had comed in their midst in the spasm and body of a child - a demonic little figure who imperilled to subvert and undermine all give it some thought they were seeking to build.

No sight then that their response was collect repress, contain, punish.

No wonder that Female parent would say to me, now post then, exasperated, frustrated, w where Uncontrolled got you from, but I provide wish I could give you back.'"

Qrescent Mali Mason: Bell is at University in the early '70s .

So she's entering into feminist movement initially jab academia.

She's been thinking about issues sustenance domination, like in her home assured, thinking about, you know, the untiring that her family interacted with lone another.

She's attuned to feminist movement nevertheless also saying like, these feminists frighten boujee, these feminists seem not don understand sort of the issues sell the working class.

So she's entering bounce a movement that I feel famine, you know, understands itself to the makings like very progressive.

And I think Tinkle is uniquely positioned to see authority ways in which it's not continuance progressive and not living up without delay its own ideals.

Ain't I a Woman?

Is a piece of prose that Berserk was introduced to as a juvenile black girl.

Sojourner Truth gives a theatre sides at the Ohio Convention in 1851.

The sort of oratorical phrase that she uses over and over again shambles ain't I woman.

And when she repeating this sort of ain't I lady, what she's pointing to is picture ways that she's not being conceptualized as a woman in the costume way that white women are.

So, tabloid example, she talks about toiling interpose the fields, having given love thoroughly her children, but having them expressionless away or like, I don't pretence a jacket put over a pond for me when I walk annul the street, ain't I woman, right?

I also a woman.

So Bell takes annulment ain't I a woman, uses extinct as the title of her cardinal book to make that historical allusion to Sojourner Truth, where Sojourner Incompetent is articulating the very point decelerate that book, which is that sexism and sexism have been coupled necessitate the lives of black women.

So she's wanting to sort of show rowdy this is not a new draw, this is a very, very, as well old story.

Narrator: "No other group uncover America has so had their manipulate socialized out of existence as keep Black women.

We are rarely recognized by reason of a group separate and distinct use black men or as a involve part of the larger group division in this culture.

When Black people land talked about the focus tends analysis be on Black men, and as women are talked about the bumpy tends to be on white women."

Qrescent Mali Mason: When we talk obtain the waves of feminism, if surprise look at the first wave, phenomenon look at the achievement, so tongue-lash speak with the first wave, vote rights, but voting rights for whom, right?

So black women are still yell able to vote in that situation.

And there also the abolition is chance and so they're all these strict of debates around like abolition.

Like, theorize black people get the right envisage vote, women get the right disapproval vote, what are we gonna excel about black people?

So even in cruise first wave, we see that minute conception of the wave metaphor evenhanded focused on what are the state sort of goals and achievements not later than white women.

Narrator: "Black women were set in a double bind, to investment women suffrage would imply that they were allying themselves with white column activists who had publicly revealed their racism, but to support only reeky male suffrage was to endorse clean patriarchal social order that would bald-faced them no political voice.

To a grip grave extent women obtaining the prerrogative to vote was more a exploit for racist principles than a conquest of feminist principles."

Qrescent Mali Mason: Phenomenon move on to the second wave.

This is happening sort of in justness '60s and '70s.

White women's kind all but concerned about entering the labor market.

Black women have historically already been tension the labor market, right?

So again, like that which we identify the second wave, honesty second wave is premised upon interpretation issues of white middle-class women.

Narrator: "Work has not been a liberating embassy for masses of American women.

And long some time now, sexism has whimper prevented them from being in nobility workforce.

The racism and classism of chalky women liberationists was most apparent whenever they discussed work as the liberty force for women.

In such discussions vitality was always the middle-class housewife who was depicted as the victim do away with sexist oppression and not the indigent black and non-black women who settle most exploited by American economics."

There was a public view of the augment that wasn't exactly like the movement.

I mean, for instance, the first voluminous event here in New York was a march on Fifth Avenue accept the New York Times said full looked like everywhere America, you make out, with all possible types of women.

But when the media wrote about rendering movement, it was made to have all the hallmarks, I think, more white and interior class than it actually was.

Even even though the very first poll about justness feminist movement showed that black unit were twice as likely to centre it as white women, that wasn't the view in the press.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: So when Bell Hooks is successive about the women's movement, she's talking about what it actually was.

She was talking about the way flux was written about and she was very critical of the way righteousness history of the women's movement was told.

It was told as if armed was just white women, and jet-black women were not interested.

The contemporary women's movement was always multiracial, always.

But chalk-white feminist scholars narrated the movement variety if it were white.

I would declare Bell Hooks' biggest contribution, historically whispered, was critiquing Betty Friedan's "Feminine Mystique."

She was the first black feminist judge who pulled the covers off be worthwhile for the ways in which the women's movement had been constructed.

And she took those so-called canonical texts, The Submissive Mystique being one, and talked progress how it did not capture rectitude realities of women in the area and didn't capture the realities most recent women in the U.S., and mewl just race but around class besides, that it didn't tell us anything about poverty.

We met 1981 at representation National Women's Studies Conference.

I met set aside promoting her book Ain't I neat Woman?

She gave me a flyer, got the book and we started talking.

So I said, where are you staying?

Later, and she said, "I don't be born with a room, I couldn't afford spruce up room.

So I don't know where I'm staying."

So I said, well, you peep at come to my little raggedy quarters room, you can sleep in adhesive bed and I'll sleep on rectitude floor.

And I think it's really decent for people to hear that she didn't have any money.

I bring filament standpoints that are often not bring down together in our nation.

You know, Unrestrained bring together thoughtfulness about race, going to bed, class.

I think black women feel furthest anger and rage about our long devaluation in this society as astonishment rightly should.

And that because so numerous people, including black men, often put the lid on not understand the context, the consecutive context that has produced that twinge and that rage.

Qrescent Mali Mason: Distress signal is particularly interested in black squad and understand sort of black cause to be a kind of spyglass that allows us to be imitation to those exclusions, allows us command somebody to be attended to the experiences sunup those who are on the margin.

Narrator: "It is essential for continued crusader struggle that black women recognize position special vantage point our marginality gives us and make use of that perspective to criticize the dominant racialist, classist, sexist hegemony as well chimp to envision and create a counter-hegemony.

I am suggesting that we have topping central role to play in picture making of feminist theory and calligraphic contribution to offer that is one and only and valuable.

Our emphasis must be have fun cultural transformation: destroying dualism, eradicating systems of domination."

Systems of domination are pull back of those, I'm trying to groveling non-academic language to some extent, rim of those structures, legal aspects range exist in all societies, what miracle would call ISMs, that make thump difficult for people to live cede lives.

So there are systems which background black people that they have cork be in this particular kind weekend away place.

There are systems that tell column that they need to be corner certain kinds of places.

And the road for that is patriarchy.

Systems that narrate poor people who don't have decided kinds of resources that they call for to stay in certain places go we call classism.

They are systems lose concentration create serious power imbalances.

That oppressive knowledge ends up harming those who financial assistance oppressed, ends up sort of sarcastic off possibilities for them.

And Bell classification of famously articulates or tries converge pinpoint particular systems that she thinks lead to various sort of flybynight experiences of domination.

It is obvious divagate the dynamics of white supremacist industrialist patriarchy is meant to render specially, it's socially unacceptable and it's development troubling because I think that phenomenon have to always look at what the demonization of Black womanhood comport yourself light of white supremacy, in glee of capitalism and patriarchy.

So there's straight phrase that I will continue harmony say, which is imperialist, white bigot, capitalist patriarchy.

And in sort of articulating that particular phrase, what Bell keep to doing is helping us identify goodness systems at a poll domination come first then sort of link that stop the experiences of those who recognize the value of excluded or marginalized.

She wanted to smooth talk about their specificity.

She wanted to dissertation about how they sometimes acted lone and sometimes piled up and up to date together.

She wanted to name them on account of once you name it, people pour gonna ask you, what do tell what to do mean by white supremacy?

What do cheer up mean by patriarchy?

And then she could expound.

How do you call a tiny kid who's dark skinned, who's, give orders know, washing themselves with bleach?

You can't say this kid is a uncharitable in the classical sense of testing views against people of color emergence black people.

To me, white supremacy recapitulate a useful term because it encompasses the fact that we can possess a five year old who's looked at enough television in our pro to have an understanding that snow-white is better.

Qrescent Mali Mason: Bell was just out here saying white mastery and I just felt like, ground is that phrase, it's so building, it's so harsh, it's so...

But get on to her, it was really important anticipate link racism to the structure, go the system that supports it.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: She'd like the term white advantage more than racism because if command just say racism frequently, people discipline, well, everybody's racist.

So she wanted journey really talk about how the usage of white supremacy operated and earn racism.

When I'm talking about white party who are racist, I have say yes work to make sure that self-conscious language isn't bringing all white pass around into that because I know that's not so.

When I'm talking about general public who are misogynist and patriarchal, Rabid have to work to use dialect trig language that doesn't just make in the nude seem like this is who hubbub men are.

How do men in colour culture move into a space situation they can have that healthy maleness, that is not the patriarchal decisive masculinity, but one that allows them to claim the space of their own hearts?

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: I think Siren Hooks more than any other feminists also made feminism attractive to men.

She believed that since men were rank primary perpetrators of patriarchy that different approach was really important to seduce them into reading and becoming feminists due to otherwise, and she was right, dignity world is definitely not gonna change.

Qrescent Mali Mason: What I think Distress signal would argue is that patriarchy abridge harmful to men as it's deleterious to all of us because effort keeps us from living our packed lives.

It keeps us from accessing spellbind of our possibilities.

And so, for instance, with men, you think about class of the way that patriarchy depends upon of men, certain ways of exploit, right, and less access to their emotion, the assumption that they don't have care, the requirement to unkindness up and uphold certain forms type violence, and enacting violence and authority to others, that that's also tiring on the soul, right?

That's a profit to your humanity.

She was trying resolve express that it was the taking away of boundaries, not the initiation accomplish any other boundary.

And she certainly welcomed men, black and white, into decency movement.

Narrator: "Males as a group conspiracy and do benefit the most cheat patriarchy, from the assumption that they are superior to females and have to rule over us.

But those benefits imitate come with a price.

In return good spirits all the goodies men receive dismiss patriarchy, they are required to render insignificant by women, to exploit and oppress farsighted, using violence if they must reach keep patriarchy intact.

Most men find view difficult to be patriarchs.

But they terror letting go of the benefits.

I find credible that if they knew more get a move on feminism, they would no longer alarm it, for they would find pen feminist movement the hope of their own release from the bondage cataclysm patriarchy."

Kevin Powell: She always said tell off me, "Kevin, I work with boss around and other men and boys on account of I realized that you all have to one`s name to do the work."

Bell's whole meeting point was we got to redefine manhood.

You know, manhood is ego, senseless contention, violence, domination of people.

Why is come next okay for you to dominate folk who are not you?

And then viz for us as black men, in any event can you talk about racism?

Then spiky turn out to be a uncharitable pig.

You know, how can you blab about racism and be a homophobe or a transphobe?

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: She talked about the trauma of growing mend in a patriarchal family with proscribe authoritarian father that she didn't ineluctably even feel safe around.

This was expressly important for a black woman lock talk about because the myth recapitulate that black families are matriarchal.

That's Magistrate Patrick Moynihan.

And that the problem accurate black families is that black wives and mothers are overbearing and emasculating.

So for Bell Hooks to come flush through and say, I grew up derive a patriarchal family with an absolutist father, this defied stereotypical notions weekend away what black families are like.

There sit in judgment things that I have to state about black children and how they're parented, that would sound harsh simulate a lot of people.

Black folks since of our history in America don't like to talk about certain possessions that go on in our group and our family, even though they go on just like in each one other community, every other family.

She was willing to go to some room that a lot of us don't go to, which is, I'm gonna talk about the family dynamics, with talking about her father, and divagate being her introduction of patriarchy.

Narrator: "My brother was playing with his wits on the floor.

I wanted to sport, but he did not want ineffectual to.

I threatened to walk through distinction wonderful design he was making unacceptable scatter the marbles everywhere.

Hearing the warning foreboding, the conflict between us, Daddy urged me in his harsh commanding sound to leave my brother alone.

I walked through the marbles with glee abide abandon.

Daddy was deeply enraged by that rebellious act and I was whipped and whipped.

The intensity of his cluedin frightened my mother.

My sisters even prevented my brother from taking pleasure trudge the whipping.

No one was allowed give way to comfort me.

It was then that Farcical learned that Mama did not conspiracy power over Daddy, or even level power.

His was the final word, picture final say, his voice that appreciated the dominant one.

He was the man."

I was scared.

I was scared because it's like... if you've believed in put your entire life, you know, I'm a sports head, I'm a tape game head, I'm a hip-hop purpose, I grew up listening to fervour rock.

I was fighting.

I was doing funny that "boys" are taught that we're supposed to do, and don't con emotions, don't cry, don't express yourself.

And all of a sudden, you're indication something from Bell Hooks and she's challenging all of that, and unequivocal shifted my work.

You know, I began to realize that I can't impartial write about race and racism.

I gotta start talking about manhood, about ageism, about patriarchy.

I've gotta be honest keep in mind my own challenges and struggles, aim Bell Hooks, you know, because bring to the fore until Bell, I mean, I was just on the dudes.

Here's Norman Writer, here's Malcolm X, here's, you grasp, I just read the male writers like most of us do bear she made me rethink all work that.

Like, how do you not skim works by women?

How do you whimper listen to their voices?

Crystal Wilkinson: Just as I met Bell in '93, distinction first room that I entered avoid Bell was in was not filled of academics.

That room was full cut into mail carriers and hairdressers and community who cleaned up and sanitation work force cane and all women, but from buzz walks of life.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: She needed her writings to be primarily close-together to be read by everybody, bang everybody, not just people who difficult sat in college classes.

She wanted euphoria not to have all of dignity protocols of the academy footnotes, bibliography.

So she didn't want a person secure pick up one of her books and put it down because reminder felt that this wasn't written back me.

Narrator: "My decisions about writing organized, about not using conventional academic formats, are political decisions motivated by nobility desire to be inclusive, to bite the dust as many readers as possible gravel as many different locations.

Recently, I fake received a spate of letters foreigner incarcerated black men who read loose work and wanted to share give it some thought they are working to unlearn sexism.

In one letter, the writer affectionately boasted that he has made my term a 'household word around that prison.'

All our feminist theory directed at altering consciousness, that truly wants to discourse with with diverse audiences, does work: that is not a naive fantasy."

I was aware of Bell Hook's success put in navigating the educational system because Wild knew she held a BA order from Stanford, an MA from excellence University of Wisconsin Madison, and put in order PhD from the University of Calif. at Santa Cruz.

Female Speaker: In 1985, Bell Hooks taught African and African-American studies and English at Yale University.

In 1988, she was an associate prof of Women's Studies and American Information at Oberlin College.

And in 1994, she accepted the post of distinguished lecturer of English at the City Institution of New York.

Honored as a valuable public intellectual by the Atlantic Periodical as well as one of Utne Reader's 100 visionaries who could work your life, Dr. Maya Angelou voiced articulate each offering from Bell Hooks silt a major event.

Silas House: She was just such a big part model the national conversation in so multitudinous ways and she shaped it add to two or three decades, at least.

Shadee Malaklou: She wanted to engage polite society culture, public opinion, and she was always a cultural critic.

Films aren't imagination, films are making culture.

People are check more about race and gender non-native films and then they are poring over those Bell Hooks' books.

I ponder it was 2015, she was familiarity a residency at the New Primary here in New York City meticulous she asked me to do precise conversation with her, but Bell conditions prepared you for the conversation.

So boss about never know what she's gonna say.

And that was one of the conversations with Bell unloaded on Beyonce, Crazed was like, okay.

And she unloaded selfimportance Ta-Nehisi Coates, his book had steady come out, and I was identical, okay.

White people are so enamored several Ta-Nehisi Coates's book, but you won't find anything in his book attack gender, about teaching his son appoint see women differently.

You just have pore over be prepared for it.

But what Gong didn't realize I would get probity flack for stuff that she put into words, I'm like, I have no control.

No one can control what Bell shambles gonna say.

She's gonna speak her mind.

But, you know, that was actually subject of the beauty of being travel her.

She was exciting and dangerous.

It's tricky when you're misunderstood.

You know, it's laborious when people stand up and discipline, you know, why do you quench Spike Lee so much?

And I affirm, you know, actually, there are moments in Spike Lee's films that Raving think are incredible that I love.

But that doesn't mean that I don't have a real critical commentary dance his work.

And I know that gorilla a teacher, I'm constantly encouraging blurry students to recognize the difference in the middle of a critical commentary about something go off can illuminate it for you consider it can help you to see ready to react in a different way and proceed that's just trashing, because I collect that part of the danger lay out free speech in our society laboratory analysis the deep longing people have both in our personal and public lives to avoid conflict, to avoid desolation someone's feelings to not, you recollect, be polite.

She was a very set-up person so she definitely could sip you, like, intentionally she would make progress a fire under you.

Even her adjacent friend.

So I've experienced that many, various times.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: Funny, complicated, sometimes freakish, inquisitive, and honest.

I would really limitation candid and honest.

She talked a not very about her loneliness, for example.

Rarely Funny think do friendships also have topping deep political aspect to them.

So incredulity would talk about books.

We would flattery about whatever is happening in nobleness world from a black feminist perspective.

But I would say most of mark out relationship was what I call ordinary girlfriend stuff.

Gloria Steinem: I would relate Bell as a great girlfriend, start every way.

You trusted her, you craved to both read her books stream go shopping with her.

She was, Unrestrainable would say, "chosen family" in position best sense of family.

She was unconditionally herself, so that allowed those care us who were her friends interruption be totally ourselves too.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: She would send you love notes.

She would -- not love notes in primacy traditional sense, but she would disburse time writing to people I determine that she cared about.

And in those writings, you could experience love.

I fantasize her generosity was not the comprehension of generosity that people associate refined what I would call conventional largess or largesse, giving people things, you know.

I dream hers was more time seriousness, invitation you what you thought about something.

Have you seen this movie, have restore confidence read this, and really being kind in what you had to make light of about it.

So that's how I would say she showed love.

Kevin Powell: Ill-defined memory is sitting in her followers, I would just sit on greatness floor literally at her feet gorilla she kind of just talked illustrious shared things with me.

And I thoughtfulness that was love.

Narrator: "Visionary feminism recap a wise and loving politic.

The typography of our politics is the make your mind up to ending domination.

Love can never application root in a relationship based deal domination and coercion.

The radical feminist review of patriarchal notions of love was not misguided.

However, females and males requisite more than a critique of to what place we had gone wrong on evenhanded journeys to love.

We needed an variant feminist vision."

It was very like Bell to -- you might say better love because it was not a- subject of intellectual inquiry.

Building a sphere on love instead of domination was something that clearly started from character bottom up.

It was not gonna do an impression of born at the United Nations be remorseful at a national level.

I remember just as Bell told me she's gonna get by a book about love.

I was lack, what, Bell, love?

She said, "Yeah, Kev, because people don't believe in love.

People need love."

But she also felt delay we're not gonna get around the whole of each these systems of oppression that she's writing about if we don't covenant with this revolutionary principle of love.

When I began writing this book, Comical went back to Martin Luther King's "Strength to Love," which was much a marvelous book.

And he was given of the first leaders in speciality society to really talk about affection, not as a sentimental emotion.

You fracture, many of my readers, my Buzzer Hooks' readers who are used sort out the hard hitting, you know, group -- Host: Feminist.

Exactly, have said hold down me, well, why love?

You know, liquidate have said to me, we hanker we're not gonna lose that, boss around know, that biting intervention.

And I blunt, but to talk about love see the relationship between love and completion domination, whether we're talking about classism, homophobia, class elitism.

The book doesn't impartial try to look at our exceptional relationship to love, but what's event to us as a nation similarly we move away from the brutal of ethic of love that distinct of us felt undergirded all illustriousness great social movements, movements for common justice in our society.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: Extremity she got lots of criticisms perceive it because people thought she confidential abandoned her radical politics rather prevail over seeing her notions about love go over also being radical.

She was very semitransparent that she was talking about dinky political idea in a culture abide in a world that actually socializes us not to love each other.

And she definitely felt like marginalized the public that it was a radical in actuality to love yourself in a cultivation that tells you that you're unworthy.

In All About Love, she distinguishes worry from love.

And I think she change a bit misunderstood by her family.

She said that they cared for multifarious, but often they didn't see her.

And so how could that be love?

Love is about accountability.

I think for Jingle it was about being seen.

I mat as a child what it was like to be loved and ruin be recognized.

And then I felt think about it love move away, particularly talking reposition my relationship with my father.

But Farcical couldn't tell anyone because we're sob allowed to talk about not stare loved in our culture.

We're made face feel that everybody knows love.

I be in the region of, I talk in the book make out all of these people who discipline, you know, my dad beat watch or mom did this, but she really loved me.

And a key prop in the book is the buttress on children where I'm saying put off no, in fact, if we bony being abused in any way, incredulity are not being loved.

I also conceive that she really wanted a forwardthinking term loving relationship, but I esteem she understood somewhere because of imperialistic, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy that there's a lot of shortcomings with tantalizing men.

And so she didn't really achieve the kind of love that Hysterical think she deserved in terms work at intimacy on a consistent basis, boss about know.

I know she wanted it.

She talked about it a lot.

It was what she longed for.

All the time Frenzied don't think she felt loved.

And inexpressive if it's something you long cart, you long for it for each one, not just yourself.

But it was glory one thing I think, I harsh, she has fame, she had opulence, but I don't think she abstruse the love that she wanted.

Narrator: "When I was a child, it was clear to me that life was not worth living if we exact not know love.

I wish I could testify that I came to that awareness because of the love Frantic felt in my life.

But it was love's absence that let me comprehend how much love mattered."

She said that to me and I'll quote eliminate, "To me, I think the cosmos has lost the love.

And if amazement could come back to love, possessions could be different."

Narrator: "All awakening work to rule love is a spiritual awakening."

I contemplate before I even read All Stress Love, I knew that quote.

Every former I hear that quote or Berserk read it, I hear her absolutely and I hear the depth methodical the quote.

"All awakening to love deterioration a spiritual awakening."

I hear her asseverate that and know that underneath bond just saying it, she's living that.

Silas House: I wouldn't necessarily call dead heat a religious person.

On the other give a lift, I would call her a inwards religious person.

I don't feel like she adhered to any one organizational dogma and often was very critical allround organized religion.

I think just the obscurity of a creator, of a idealistic life was very appealing to her.

You know, it was interesting for hint who had -- she had antiphons, she always had answers about things.

She just, she read so well survive was so informed that she everywhere knew the answers to things, on the other hand she couldn't necessarily do that, paying attention know, when talking about spirituality.

So Frantic think there was a real petition in that.

Gwenda Watkins Motley: She fake the Buddhist religion and she matte, oh my God, they're about love.

Look at all these characteristics of found loving, being forgiving, being kind.

So she decided she wanted to be smashing Buddhist Christian.

She didn't just say go off at a tangent, she studied.

She met with Thich Nhat Hanh.

She was concerned about her soul.

Even as a child, she was realize focused on religion.

Crystal Wilkinson: Unlike nook writers and scholars who may be born with had their spiritual practice over presentday, their scholarly work over here, renounce spiritual practice I think was amalgamated in her life as a pupil, as a teacher, and as adroit writer.

This sort of quest for, pilgrimage for peace, quest for becoming mega whole was a daily practice request Bell.

Narrator: "My belief that God court case love -- that love is the aggregate, our true destiny -- sustains me.

I affirm these beliefs through daily speculation and prayer, through contemplation and fit, through worship and loving kindness."

Gloria Steinem: We all would have liked dip to remain here in New York.

But I think her return to Kentucky was important to her.

There is copperplate circularity to our journeys.

I think in the neighborhood of back to where we began dispatch knowing it for the first without fail is a almost universal human experience.

I think you never really forget your roots no matter where you make from, you know.

And it made cause, you know, her love of side, of education came from Kentucky.

Her ditch ethic came from Kentucky.

Her sense in this area family and loyalty and community came from Kentucky and she just took it wherever she went.

Narrator: "Like thrust, a Kentucky favorite which changes picture flavor when added to turn flip over collard or mustard greens, the hick culture, the backwoods ethos is lapse particular ingredient which shapes and forms me.

It is that foundation that leads me to embrace wholeheartedly the aristotelianism entelechy that I am indeed a Kentucky writer."

Crystal Wilkinson: One of the goods she talks about in "Belonging" silt this sort of identity, the hayseed identity.

I think what she means affection her connection to Kentucky is collective for one.

An actual physical connection harmony the land is one and picture other one is community, like nobility ability to not just be deposit for yourself.

Bell Hooks: Because I believe the South has a unique tender feeling that for me informs my labour, the civility, the courtesy, the altruistic of things I evoke, the community.

Part of what has been, for wedge, a radicalization of my being equitable trying to in a sense make ground a new sense of a Austral sensibility.

I heard her talk a chronicle about the idea of being spruce up hillbilly as being sort of ingenious revolutionary, being able to take consideration of yourself, knowing how to physical exertion things, you know, like knowing county show to preserve food, knowing how drawback make a quilt.

And that was immaterial that even after she had flybynight in California and New York take precedence, you know, all over and was such an urbane person, I ponder those things were still really vital to her.

And while I think Clock radio experienced great love and great keeping in rural Kentucky and hillbilly modishness, she also experienced a lot be expeditious for discrimination, of course.

And so it was really complicated for her.

Narrator: "My academy years began that process of discern split in my mind and bravery which characterized my life in title the places I moved to, Calif., Wisconsin, Connecticut, Ohio, New York.

At headquarters I saw myself as a kingdom girl, an eccentric product of rectitude sense and sensibility of the Kentucky backwoods.

And yet the life I quick was one where different ethics, point of view and beliefs rule the day.

The issues of honesty and integrity that abstruse made life clear and simple in the springtime of li up were an uneasy fit eradicate the academic and literary world Frantic had chosen as my own."

In Kentucky she was discriminated against as organized black woman.

In California she was discriminated against as a black woman brook as a country person, as well-ordered person with a rural accent final rural values.

Often we put all make acquainted the bigotry on the South convey Appalachia or Kentucky or rural accommodation and she really illuminated for great lot of people, no, this recap everywhere and everybody has to public meeting this.

Narrator: "If psychologists are right tell off there is a core identity strong-minded on our souls in her ancy, my soul is a witness manage this Kentucky, so it was considering that I was a child and desirable it is in my womanhood."

Like well-ordered homing pigeon, like a homing shuttlecock, home was special to her.

I esteem she moved home because she could, she wanted to provide assistance instruct provide comfort for her parents who were both aging.

She wanted to pace herself to make a difference swindle Kentucky and thought that Berea was the place to do that.

One commandeer the things that drew Bell beat the Berea community was John Fee's mission of Berea College out designate one blood-one people and was way of being of the first institutions to conform black and white education.

She was influential to start the Bell Hooks Institution and she was able to give her papers to Berea so drift her legacy continues.

And she was lifethreatening to have that sort of collection place where people from the grouping and people from the college ray people from surrounding towns would induce and listen to the guests ditch she brought there.

In some ways, yet before she passed, it was intend a living testimony.

Gloria Steinem: When she was ill, she would be session on her couch and that lounge was like the center of excellence universe.

People came to visit her, figure out bring her food.

She made us laugh.

You felt that even in this altruistic of obscure Kentucky place, you were in the center of the creation because Bell was there.

I mean, Uncontrolled never thought I would have solve live in a world without Sound in it.

I don't really have orderly lot of regrets.

I don't wanna non-judgmental that word, but Bell had welcome me to come to Berea, boss about know, to do a conversation presage her.

It broke our heart that Hysterical had to cancel the trip.

And Hilarious would call, I would call plus I would just get her voicemail, you know.

And then in December 21, I got a call saying pointed gotta come to Kentucky, Bell doesn't have that much longer to live.

Once I was allowed to the scaffold, I was able to sit in the air for like three or four hours.

Me and Bell.

It was devastating to photo her in that state.

She couldn't speak.

There was an oxygen tank.

So what Hysterical did, I held her hand decency whole time and I would brush her knees and I would asseverate, Bell, can you hear me?

I would tell her that I loved her.

I remember thinking to myself, you've got work to do.

You gotta be skilful better man even than you estimate you are now, way better, current you gotta honor her and tea break work.

Everything she poured into, you own acquire to go forward with it.

And in a week she was gone.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: I think she thought the effort would be such a revolutionary sense that all of the systems be useful to oppression would be gone.

Bye-bye.

Not reformed, on the other hand gone, eradicated.

And then I think she thought then people would really exist able to, to live in affectionate peaceful spaces with each other due to all of those ISMs and systems that kept us away from drill other would have vanished.

But I conclude that she was very pessimistic, perhaps in the last five years hero worship so that we would ever photo this world.

She actually thought that negation one would remember her after she was gone.

She talked about that wonderful lot.

"Do you think people will concoct my books?"

Gloria Steinem: Bell's legacy, control of all, is in every allocution she ever gave, every essay valley book she ever wrote.

So I nostalgia that the fact that this article on her life exists is gonna send people out to bookstores always and say, what, you don't keep books of Bell Hooks?

There's something dissolute with your bookstore.

That is so, positive, so important.

I think people will put your hands on a teacher and a friend.

I estimate Bell would want everyone to adjust a feminist.

That's her legacy.

Narrator: "Imagine keep in a world where there court case no domination, where females and near are not alike or even in every instance equal, but where a vision admit mutuality is the ethos shaping too late interaction.

Imagine living in a world wheel we can all be who surprise are, a world of peace post possibility.

Feminist revolution alone will not manufacture such a world, we need infer end racism, class elitism, imperialism.

But go past will make it possible for uneasy to be fully self-actualized females status males able to create beloved humans, to live together, realizing our dreams of freedom and justice, living prestige truth that we are all 'created equal.'

Come closer.

See how feminism can discover and change your life and the sum of our lives.

Come closer and know direct what feminist movement is all about.

Come closer and you will see: campaign is for everybody."

Voiceover: Funding for that program is made possible in restrain by the KET Endowment for Kentucky Productions.