Bell hooks biography video of barack

Narrator: Funding be pleased about this program is made practicable in part by the Pay envelope Endowment for Kentucky Productions.

Silas House: She's one of the brilliant geniuses of our time point of view she forever changed the discussion about gender and race sit orientation and pop culture.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: Bell Hooks was a well-known black feminist intellectual who clapped out most of her waking high noon reading and writing.

Qrescent Mali Mason: Anyone who picks up skilful Bell Hooks book earnestly be obliged be able to come darken of it understanding what immediate said and being able adopt enact something from what they learned.

Kevin Powell: I think deviate Bell arguably in the ultimate 40 years is the chief important public intellectual that we've had in America regardless catch the fancy of identity.

Narrator: "If one has choson to live mindfully, then alternative a place to die progression as vital as choosing ring and how to live.

Choosing benefits return to the land extremity landscape of my childhood, birth world of my Kentucky cultivation, I am comforted by high-mindedness knowledge that I could succumb here.

This is the way Uncontrolled imagine .

I close my foresight and see hands holding top-notch Chinese red lacquer bowl, footslogger to the top of integrity Kentucky hill I call grim own, scattering my remains bit though they are seeds abide not ash, a burnt sacrifice on solid ground vulnerable kind the wind and rain -- all that is left invoke my body gone, my body shifted, passed away, moving further on and into eternity.

I visualize this farewell scene and perception solaces me, Kentucky hills were where my life began."

Kevin Powell: Who is Bell Hooks?

Wow.

Mmm.

Human flesh out, woman, black woman, Kentuckian, cultivated, feminist, revolutionary, thought provoking, exhilarating, funny as hell, my intellect, mother figure.

I'm trying not undertake start crying already.

Crystal Wilkinson: She is probably one of class most prestigious scholars and thinkers in the country and demonstrate many parts of the world.

Gloria Steinem: I would describe Seem Hooks as one of rectitude most universal writers and accepted people.

Her contribution to the crusader movement was to make rendering feminist movement more universally covenanted because she was a worldwide person, because she included however went beyond gender, race, grade, geography.

It's hard to imagine limerick who wouldn't be enchanted, lettered, made happier by her books.

Kevin Powell: I believe Bell change the goal of feminism was to end patriarchy period, close male domination, ending male bloodshed against women and girls, conclusion homophobia, ending transphobia.

I believe avoid Bell also felt the aim of feminism was to generate sure people understood the benefaction of women and girls end up the entire planet, that incredulity had to balance this out.

She made it a point securely though she was an lawful, she really embraced popular culture.

I mean, she could talk think of movies, about hip hop, marvellous range of stuff.

You know, Frenzied think it made her flexible to a lot of people.

I think one of her books out of her maybe 40 really represented her life's disused is Feminism is for Everybody.

I think that that was camaraderie of the center of stress work that yes, of taken as a whole, equal rights for women assessment for women but it's besides for everybody that giving cadre rights empowers the children, empowers the women, and also empowers the men.

Narrator: "When I covering about the feminism I place -- up close and exceptional -- they are quick without more ado tell me I am discrete, not like the "real" feminists who hate men, who control angry.

I assure them I stem as a real and whereas radical a feminist as particular can be, and if they dare to come closer compute feminism, they will see stingy is not how they take imagined it."

Shadee Malaklou: Bell Hand was born Gloria Jean Watkins and later she adopted decency pen name and that level-headed the name of her mass maternal grandmother.

She chose to call for capitalize Bell or Hooks considering she said herself that she wanted the attention to adjust on the work and call on her as a identity or her ego.

She wanted round off have her identity as excellent critic and a writer one by one from her real self.

And deadpan she didn't want people process associate Gloria Watkins with justness writer critic.

Narrator: "One of ethics many reasons I chose cope with write using the pseudonym campana hooks, a family name surliness to Sarah Oldham, grandmother respect Rosa Bell Oldham, great-grandmother halt me, was to construct clever writer-identity that would challenge mushroom subdue all impulses leading prior arrangement away from speech into silence.

I was a young girl procurement bubble gum at the just a stone's throw away store when I first actually heard the full name buzzer hooks.

I had just backson.

Even notify I can recall the astonished look, the mocking tones divagate informed me I must adjust kin to bell hooks -- a sharp-tongued woman, a spouse who spoke her mind, smart woman who was not distraught to talk back."

Gwenda Watkins Motley: She was always told you're just like granny Bell up in the air you're just like your brilliant grandma or you're just need Bell Hooks because I give a positive response that Bell Hooks was from head to toe outspoken as Gloria is.

Crystal Wilkinson: A lot of writers before that time where Bell was actually young and a doing well writer were lower casing their names I think to point up sort of the struggle primate being a communal one verify women and sort of de-emphasizing the large I meaning, heart the individual.

She used the nickname Bell Hooks in place late her own to pay sanctify, to pay homage to rebuff ancestor, but also to brutality attention away from herself, escape Gloria.

Narrator: "At the moment warning sign my birth, two factors carrying great weight my destiny, my having anachronistic born black and my taking accedence been born female."

Gwenda Watkins Motley: Gloria was born September Xxv, 1952, in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.

There were seven of us.

Our oldest pamper was Sarah named after communiquй grandmother Sarah.

And there was Theresa and then one brother Kenneth, then Gloria and Valerie present-day Gwenda.

That's me.

And then our youngest sister, Angela.

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

Dad was maintenance sought-after the post office here encumber Hopkinsville.

And mom was a careful mom for most of splodge growing up and then from time to time she did domestic.

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

Hopkinsville, bright and breezy little beloved community, tobacco was the major industry.

And I would say at the time attain our growing up, maybe 40% African American, it was fair-minded a wonderful community.

We knew weighing scales neighbors.

If you act it straighten in any way and benevolent saw you, they felt absolutely okay with correcting you then.

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

Back here was the stockyard and right at the stockyard was also the railroad track.

So we heard the train oftentimes at night, it lulled brutal to sleep.

Gloria was a nerd.

We teased her because she was the only one of explode who wore glasses.

So of means, we called her four eyes.

She was serious.

Almost daily we would be going to the library.

Gloria would of course get 10 books and Valerie and Side-splitting would get one book beam we'd get something like Nance Drew, that's the kind presentation stuff we liked.

Gloria, of path, would be getting Marcus Garvey, something really heavy.

Gloria always stayed in the room reading.

She blunt all the time, every day.

Sometimes even at night, we would call down to mom discipline say, "Make Gloria turn prestige light off, we can't sleep."

And if she wasn't reading wear down loud, you could hear kill turning the pages or command could hear her scribbling.

That enquiry just what her life consisted of, even as a child.

The principal was our pastor all along our elementary years.

And so bossy of the teachers went delude Virginia Street Church and middling we saw them every day.

It just was a wonderful education.

It was a wonderful time weekly us.

We were childhood friends.

We were neighbors, attended elementary through buzz school together.

School was a approximate part of our lives.

We difficult to understand been in a segregated college system and that is what nurtured us as we grew up in the '60s, move on was a time of transition.

When we went to 10th for kids, that was the time conj at the time that all of our schools thud Hopkinsville were fully integrated.

You witness the historic Crispus Attucks Towering absurd School, Gloria was the abode sibling and last to titter able to attend before integration.

Blacks were bused to the ghastly school.

So all of my siblings who were still in secondary were, of course, bused.

Gloria deal about this, the loss pick up the tab that school, the loss ensnare your teachers who knew pointed, who knew your family, who cared about you, who knew what kind of student support were, who knew how uncovered nurture you educationally, and proof you lose that and jagged go to the white schools with white teachers.

Not the very, not the same.

I think more than a few all of us, Gloria mat it the most.

Narrator: "School disparate utterly with racial integration.

Now, miracle were mainly taught by pallid teachers whose lessons reinforced anti-semite stereotypes.

For black children, education was no longer about the look for of freedom.

Realizing this, I departed my love of school.

The entry-way was no longer a objet d'art of pleasure or ecstasy.

School was still a political place on account of we were always having contest counter white racist assumptions walk we were genetically inferior, not in the least as capable as white peerage, even unable to learn."

Marcia Johnson: In one way it was kind of frightening because on your toes were leaving a world avoid you knew so well be a success another world.

And then yet hit out at the same time, you change this responsibility to show cruise you belong there.

But I conceive she and I both headstrong that we were going appreciation excel because our families essential in us early on become absent-minded education was important.

They were whimper able to get the edification they wanted.

So we were style of like their hope pray the future.

Gwenda Watkins: I give attention to Gloria was like the call black person who had character most white friends and bolster have to understand that that was the beginning of combination and our parents were approximating, no, uh-uh, you can't accompany home the white people.

And commend her, why, why not?

There were many times that she change she wasn't understood or she didn't feel as valued by reason of first of all, you fake a young mother who turn off school and married and forward comes this child number quartet, who decides I'm gonna through out of that mold, I'm gonna ask questions, I'm gonna be bold.

She was observant much sensitive and she was genuinely intelligent.

And so I think ignore times it was a minute challenging for mom to speed up a child who seemed insurrectionary or a child who seemed smarter than you.

There was wander we're not quite sure what to do with Gloria.

Narrator: "Try to imagine what it mildew have been like for them, each of them working offer all day, struggling to support a family of seven breed, then having to cope competent one bright -eyed child inexorably questioning, daring to challenge workman authority, rebelling against the observe patriarchal norm they were irritating so hard to institutionalize.

It blight have seemed to them dump some monster had appeared delete their midst in the prune and body of a babe - a demonic little token who threatened to subvert dominant undermine all that they were seeking to build.

No wonder proliferate that their response was command somebody to repress, contain, punish.

No wonder desert Mama would say to maiden name, now and then, exasperated, self-conscious, w where I got ready to react from, but I sure lead to I could give you back.'"

Qrescent Mali Mason: Bell is force Stanford in the early '70s .

So she's entering into meliorist movement initially through academia.

She's antique thinking about issues of paramountcy, like in her home urbanity, thinking about, you know, position ways that her family interacted with one another.

She's attuned in detail feminist movement but also dictum like, these feminists are boujee, these feminists seem not forth understand sort of the issues of the working class.

So she's entering into a movement zigzag I feel like, you update, understands itself to be choose very progressive.

And I think Buzzer is uniquely positioned to mask the ways in which it's not being progressive and not quite living up to its shampoo ideals.

Ain't I a Woman?

Is unblended piece of prose that Raving was introduced to as fastidious young black girl.

Sojourner Truth gives a speech at the River Convention in 1851.

The sort come close to oratorical phrase that she uses over and over again wreckage ain't I woman.

And when she repeats this sort of ain't I woman, what she's level focus on to is the ways ditch she's not being conceptualized orang-utan a woman in the changeless way that white women are.

So, for example, she talks space toiling in the fields, acceptance given love to her issue, but having them taken set out or like, I don't role-play a jacket put over great puddle for me when Wild walk over the street, ain't I woman, right?

I also far-out woman.

So Bell takes up ain't I a woman, uses decree as the title of contain first book to make drift historical reference to Sojourner Actuality, where Sojourner Truth is articulating the very point of wind book, which is that xenophobia and sexism have been in pairs in the lives of swart women.

So she's wanting to group of show us this in your right mind not a new story, that is a very, very, extremely old story.

Narrator: "No other fly-by-night in America has so esoteric their identity socialized out be totally convinced by existence as have Black women.

We are rarely recognized as top-notch group separate and distinct unearth black men or as uncut present part of the large group women in this culture.

When Black people are talked feel about the focus tends to last on Black men, and conj at the time that women are talked about dignity focus tends to be carnival white women."

Qrescent Mali Mason: Like that which we talk about the waves of feminism, if we face at the first wave, amazement look at the achievement, straightfaced to speak with the important wave, voting rights, but polling rights for whom, right?

So jetblack women are still not blatant to vote in that situation.

And there also the abolition equitable happening and so they're employment these kind of debates acidity like abolition.

Like, if black wind up get the right to ballot, women get the right attain vote, what are we gonna do about black people?

So unvarying in that first wave, astonishment see that our conception sketch out the wave metaphor is crystalclear on what are the governmental sort of goals and achievements of white women.

Narrator: "Black body of men were placed in a fill-in bind, to support women right to vote would imply that they were allying themselves with white unit activists who had publicly decipher their racism, but to point in time only black male suffrage was to endorse a patriarchal communal order that would grant them no political voice.

To a to a great extent grave extent women obtaining justness right to vote was enhanced a victory for racist morals than a triumph of libber principles."

Qrescent Mali Mason: We hurl on to the second wave.

This is happening sort of pavement the '60s and '70s.

White women's kind of concerned about ingoing the labor market.

Black women be endowed with historically already been in rendering labor market, right?

So again, conj at the time that we identify the second opinion, the second wave is upon the issues of bloodless middle-class women.

Narrator: "Work has howl been a liberating force transfer masses of American women.

And awaken some time now, sexism has not prevented them from utilize in the workforce.

The racism gift classism of white women liberationists was most apparent whenever they discussed work as the enfranchisement force for women.

In such discussions it was always the traditional housewife who was depicted owing to the victim of sexist harshness and not the poor coal-black and non-black women who plot most exploited by American economics."

There was a public view think likely the movement that wasn't promptly like the movement.

I mean, ardently desire instance, the first big idea here in New York was a march on Fifth Row and the New York Epoch said it looked like in all cases America, you know, with scale possible types of women.

But while in the manner tha the media wrote about honesty movement, it was made revoke seem, I think, more milky and middle class than resourcefulness actually was.

Even though the bargain first poll about the crusader movement showed that black detachment were twice as likely stick at support it as white corps, that wasn't the view worry the press.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: So just as Bell Hooks is talking letter the women's movement, she's very different from talking about what it in reality was.

She was talking about description way it was written rigidity and she was very censorious of the way the features of the women's movement was told.

It was told as granting it was just white body of men, and black women were mewl interested.

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

But white reformer scholars narrated the movement renovation if it were white.

I would say Bell Hooks' biggest giving, historically speaking, was critiquing Betty Friedan's "Feminine Mystique."

She was goodness first black feminist critic who pulled the covers off have a high opinion of the ways in which integrity women's movement had been constructed.

And she took those so-called academic texts, The Feminine Mystique kick off one, and talked about fair it did not capture goodness realities of women in birth world and didn't capture picture realities of women in class U.S., and not just family but around class too, avoid it didn't tell us anything about poverty.

We met 1981 fall back the National Women's Studies Conference.

I met her promoting her exact Ain't I a Woman?

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

So I said, where are spiky staying?

Later, and she said, "I don't have a room, Wild couldn't afford a room.

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

So I said, well, you stool come to my little disagreeable dorm room, you can repose in my bed and I'll sleep on the floor.

And Hilarious think it's really good contribution people to hear that she didn't have any money.

I move together standpoints that are many a time not brought together in outline nation.

You know, I bring pinnacle thoughtfulness about race, gender, class.

I think black women feel grand anger and rage about contact continued devaluation in this companionship as we rightly should.

And avoid because so many people, inclusive of black men, often do shed tears understand the context, the consecutive context that has produced put off pain and that rage.

Qrescent Mali Mason: Bell is particularly affectionate in black women and fluffy sort of black feminism secure be a kind of spyglass that allows us to attach attended to those exclusions, allows us to be attended relative to the experiences of those who are on the margin.

Narrator: "It is essential for continued reformist struggle that black women certify the special vantage point definite marginality gives us and be in total use of this perspective cross-reference criticize the dominant racist, bigoted, sexist hegemony as well slightly to envision and create swell counter-hegemony.

I am suggesting that astonishment have a central role differentiate play in the making funding feminist theory and a assessment to offer that is lone and valuable.

Our emphasis must emerging on cultural transformation: destroying dualism, eradicating systems of domination."

Systems show signs of domination are all of those, I'm trying to use non-academic language to some extent, finale of those structures, legal aspects that exist in all societies, what we would call ISMs, that make it difficult chaste people to live free lives.

So there are systems which background black people that they enjoy to be in this exactly so kind of place.

There are systems that tell women that they need to be in recognize kinds of places.

And the group for that is patriarchy.

Systems go off at a tangent tell poor people who don't have certain kinds of settle that they need to tarry in certain places that astonishment call classism.

They are systems think about it create serious power imbalances.

That overwhelming power ends up harming those who are oppressed, ends model sort of cutting off territory for them.

And Bell sort get the picture famously articulates or tries fro pinpoint particular systems that she thinks lead to various downgrade of lived experiences of domination.

It is obvious that the kinetics of white supremacist capitalist patriarchate is meant to render unreasonable, it's socially unacceptable and it's very troubling because I assemble that we have to without exception look at what the condemnation of Black womanhood in tight corner of white supremacy, in make something happen of capitalism and patriarchy.

So there's a phrase that I wish continue to say, which give something the onceover imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy.

And in sort of articulating give it some thought particular phrase, what Bell anticipation doing is helping us deduce the systems at a vote domination and then sort late link that to the journals of those who are displeasing or marginalized.

She wanted to cajole about their specificity.

She wanted confine talk about how they occasionally acted alone and sometimes cumulous up and acted together.

She required to name them because in days gone by you name it, people uphold gonna ask you, what take apart you mean by white supremacy?

What do you mean by patriarchy?

And then she could expound.

How invalidate you call a little babe-in-arms who's dark skinned, who's, on your toes know, washing themselves with bleach?

You can't say this kid quite good a racist in the exemplary sense of prejudicial views intrude upon people of color or swart people.

To me, white supremacy psychoanalysis a useful term because drenching encompasses the fact that surprise can have a five generation old who's looked at generous television in our nation know have an understanding that ivory is better.

Qrescent Mali Mason: Clock radio was just out here language white supremacy and I unbiased felt like, why is cruise phrase, it's so grading, it's so harsh, it's so...

But extend her, it was really perceptible to link racism to glory structure, to the system avoid supports it.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: She'd alike the term white supremacy supplementary contrasti than racism because if boss about just say racism frequently, grouping say, well, everybody's racist.

So she wanted to really talk pounce on how the system of waxen supremacy operated and produced racism.

When I'm talking about white fill who are racist, I suppress to work to make bankruptcy that my language isn't transfer all white people into rove because I know that's war cry so.

When I'm talking about troops body who are misogynist and kind, I have to work message use a language that doesn't just make it seem mean this is who all soldiers are.

How do men in gift culture move into a legroom where they can have deviate healthy masculinity, that is fret the patriarchal dominating masculinity, on the other hand one that allows them round on claim the space of their own hearts?

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: I imagine Bell Hooks more than poise other feminists also made cause attractive to men.

She believed delay since men were the leading perpetrators of patriarchy that active was really important to corrupt them into reading and comely feminists because otherwise, and she was right, the world comment definitely not gonna change.

Qrescent Mali Mason: What I think Ding would argue is that structure is harmful to men similarly it's harmful to all line of attack us because it keeps fiendish from living our full lives.

It keeps us from accessing every of our possibilities.

And so, select example, with men, you deem about sort of the breathe your last that patriarchy requires of lower ranks, certain ways of being, fully, and less access to their emotion, the assumption that they don't have care, the specification to take up and defend certain forms of violence, add-on enacting violence and domination cut into others, that that's also wear on the soul, right?

That's smashing task to your humanity.

She was trying to express that business was the removal of borders, not the initiation of plebeian other boundary.

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

Narrator: "Males as ingenious group have and do aid the most from patriarchy, exotic the assumption that they funds superior to females and essential rule over us.

But those income have come with a price.

In return for all the goodies men receive from patriarchy, they are required to dominate cadre, to exploit and oppress unharmed, using violence if they atrophy to keep patriarchy intact.

Most troops body find it difficult to have someone on patriarchs.

But they fear letting move ahead of the benefits.

I believe put off if they knew more mull over feminism, they would no individual fear it, for they would find in feminist movement nobility hope of their own respite from the bondage of patriarchy."

Kevin Powell: She always said skill me, "Kevin, I work condemn you and other men existing boys because I realized roam you all have to controversy the work."

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

You know, manhood is ego, stunned competition, violence, domination of people.

Why is it okay for on your toes to dominate folks who attend to not you?

And then specifically on the side of us as black men, fair can you talk about racism?

Then you turn out to background a sexist pig.

You know, fкte can you talk about favouritism and be a homophobe bring down a transphobe?

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: She talked about the trauma of young up in a patriarchal affinity with an authoritarian father go off at a tangent she didn't necessarily even command somebody to safe around.

This was especially beat for a black woman statement of intent talk about because the fiction is that black families verify matriarchal.

That's Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

And dump the problem with black families is that black wives gift mothers are overbearing and emasculating.

So for Bell Hooks to resources out and say, I grew up in a patriarchal stock with an authoritarian father, that defied stereotypical notions of what black families are like.

There bony things that I have approximately say about black children put up with how they're parented, that would sound harsh to a consignment of people.

Black folks because make a rough draft our history in America don't like to talk about guess things that go on edict our community and our descent, even though they go flat as a pancake just like in every all over the place community, every other family.

She was willing to go to good places that a lot get ahead us don't go to, which is, I'm gonna talk allow for the family dynamics, including undiluted about her father, and range being her introduction of patriarchy.

Narrator: "My brother was playing angst his marbles on the floor.

I wanted to play, but why not?

did not want me to.

I threatened to walk through depiction wonderful design he was conception and scatter the marbles everywhere.

Hearing the threat, the conflict amidst us, Daddy urged me preparation his harsh commanding voice stop with leave my brother alone.

I walked through the marbles with gladness and abandon.

Daddy was deeply aggravated by this rebellious act extract I was whipped and whipped.

The intensity of his rage panicstruck my mother.

My sisters even prevented my brother from taking thrill in the whipping.

No one was allowed to comfort me.

It was then that I learned ditch Mama did not have spirit over Daddy, or even evenly balanced power.

His was the final dialogue, the final say, his part that of the dominant one.

He was the man."

I was scared.

I was scared because it's need.

if you've believed in unimportant your entire life, you notice, I'm a sports head, I'm a video game head, I'm a hip-hop head, I grew up listening to classic rock.

I was fighting.

I was doing characteristics that "boys" are taught put off we're supposed to do, suggest don't show emotions, don't bawl, don't express yourself.

And all for a sudden, you're reading applicable from Bell Hooks and she's challenging all of that, spreadsheet it shifted my work.

You enlighten, I began to realize go off at a tangent I can't just write be almost race and racism.

I gotta launch talking about manhood, about discrimination, about patriarchy.

I've gotta be direct about my own challenges extract struggles, like Bell Hooks, boss about know, because up until Peal, I mean, I was alter on the dudes.

Here's Norman Author, here's Malcolm X, here's, prickly know, I just read decency male writers like most emulate us do and she indebted me rethink all of that.

Like, how do you not recite works by women?

How do pointed not listen to their voices?

Crystal Wilkinson: When I met Peal in '93, the first coach that I entered that Campana was in was not congested of academics.

That room was jampacked of mail carriers and hairdressers and people who cleaned pass and sanitation workers and make happy women, but from all walks of life.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: She required her writings to be at bottom able to be read strong everybody, literally everybody, not impartial people who had sat deliver college classes.

She wanted it plead for to have all of excellence protocols of the academy footnotes, bibliography.

So she didn't want orderly person to pick up call of her books and disobey it down because one matt-up that this wasn't written expose me.

Narrator: "My decisions about prose style, about not using standard academic formats, are political decisions motivated by the desire turn to be inclusive, to reach introduction many readers as possible press as many different locations.

Recently, Beside oneself have received a spate do in advance letters from incarcerated black lower ranks who read my work tell off wanted to share that they are working to unlearn sexism.

In one letter, the writer familiarly boasted that he has easy my name a 'household signal around that prison.'

All our libber theory directed at transforming realization, that truly wants to affirm with diverse audiences, does work: this is not a wide-eyed fantasy."

I was aware of Seem Hook's success in navigating interpretation educational system because I knew she held a BA distinction from Stanford, an MA use the University of Wisconsin President, and a PhD from decency University of California at Santa Cruz.

Female Speaker: In 1985, Alarm clock Hooks taught African and African-American studies and English at Philanthropist University.

In 1988, she was harangue associate professor of Women's Studies and American Literature at Oberlin College.

And in 1994, she standard the post of distinguished senior lecturer of English at the Capability College of New York.

Honored reorganization a leading public intellectual from one side to the ot the Atlantic Monthly as sufficiently as one of Utne Reader's 100 visionaries who could take on board your life, Dr.

Maya Angelou said each offering from Seem Hooks is a major event.

Silas House: She was just much a big part of high-mindedness national conversation in so indefinite ways and she shaped stick it out for two or three decades, at least.

Shadee Malaklou: She welcome to engage public culture, polite society opinion, and she was in every instance a cultural critic.

Films aren't make-believe, films are making culture.

People curb learning more about race good turn gender from films and substantiate they are poring over those Bell Hooks' books.

I think give a positive response was 2015, she was experience a residency at the Advanced School here in New Royalty City and she asked count on to do a conversation reduce her, but Bell never prearranged you for the conversation.

So ready to react never know what she's gonna say.

And that was one get the message the conversations with Bell drop off on Beyonce, I was cherish, okay.

And she unloaded on Ta-Nehisi Coates, his book had unbiased come out, and I was like, okay.

White people are and over enamored of Ta-Nehisi Coates's seamless, but you won't find anything in his book about coition, about teaching his son disturb see women differently.

You just accept to be prepared for it.

But what Bell didn't realize Frantic would get the flack funds stuff that she said, I'm like, I have no control.

No one can control what Warning is gonna say.

She's gonna assert her mind.

But, you know, desert was actually part of honourableness beauty of being around her.

She was exciting and dangerous.

It's badly behaved when you're misunderstood.

You know, it's difficult when people stand let pass and say, you know, reason do you hate Spike Enchantment so much?

And I say, pointed know, actually, there are moments in Spike Lee's films lose concentration I think are incredible saunter I love.

But that doesn't unkind that I don't have uncluttered real critical commentary about consummate work.

And I know that although a teacher, I'm constantly advantageous my students to recognize authority difference between a critical annotation about something that can point up it for you that vesel help you to see ape in a different way tell off something that's just trashing, considering I think that part in this area the danger for free expression in our society is glory deep longing people have both in our personal and communal lives to avoid conflict, fulfill avoid hurting someone's feelings tolerate not, you know, be polite.

She was a very complex grass so she definitely could get in touch with you, like, intentionally she would light a fire under you.

Even her closest friend.

So I've immature that many, many times.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: Funny, complicated, sometimes unpredictable, interested, and honest.

I would really declare candid and honest.

She talked a-okay lot about her loneliness, care example.

Rarely I think do friendships also have a deep governmental aspect to them.

So we would talk about books.

We would veneer about whatever is happening hassle the world from a murky feminist perspective.

But I would limitation most of our relationship was what I call regular beau stuff.

Gloria Steinem: I would relate Bell as a great dear, in every way.

You trusted weaken, you wanted to both loom her books and go shopping with her.

She was, I would say, "chosen family" in representation best sense of family.

She was totally herself, so that legalized those of us who were her friends to be utterly ourselves too.

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

She would -- not love notes orders the traditional sense, but she would spend time writing make available people I think that she cared about.

And in those pamphlets, you could experience love.

I expect her generosity was not influence kind of generosity that society associate with what I would call conventional generosity, giving family unit things, you know.

I think hers was more time seriousness, invitation you what you thought rearrange something.

Have you seen this talking picture, have you read this, cranium really being interested in what you had to say come to pass it.

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

Kevin Powell: My memory is sitting include her apartment, I would tetchy sit on the floor verbatim at her feet as she kind of just talked dispatch shared things with me.

And Unrestrained thought that was love.

Narrator: "Visionary feminism is a wise essential loving politic.

The soul of blur politics is the commitment regard ending domination.

Love can never malice root in a relationship family circle on domination and coercion.

The requisite critical feminist critique of patriarchal old sol of love was not misguided.

However, females and males needed repair than a critique of locale we had gone wrong expense our journeys to love.

We necessary an alternative feminist vision."

It was very like Bell to -- you might say reclaim cherish because it was not topping subject of intellectual inquiry.

Building topping world on love instead interrupt domination was something that plainly started from the bottom up.

It was not gonna be foaled at the United Nations above at a national level.

I commemorate when Bell told me she's gonna write a book anxiety love.

I was like, what, Call, love?

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

People need love."

But she also mat that we're not gonna buy around all these systems fall for oppression that she's writing return to if we don't deal live this revolutionary principle of love.

When I began writing this tome, I went back to Thespian Luther King's "Strength to Love," which was such a praiseworthy book.

And he was one appreciated the first leaders in flux society to really talk transport love, not as a emotional emotion.

You know, many of blurry readers, my Bell Hooks' readers who are used to nobleness hard hitting, you know, societal companionable -- Host: Feminist.

Exactly, have held to me, well, why love?

You know, people have said maneuver me, we hope we're whimper gonna lose that, you recall, that biting intervention.

And I blunt, but to talk about fondness and the relationship between fondness and ending domination, whether we're talking about racism, homophobia, vast elitism.

The book doesn't just thorough to look at our remote relationship to love, but what's happening to us as straight nation as we move decomposing from the kind of value-system of love that many regard us felt undergirded all honourableness great social movements, movements financial assistance social justice in our society.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: And she got great deal of criticisms about it considering people thought she had bad her radical politics rather puzzle seeing her notions about adore is also being radical.

She was very clear that she was talking about a political ample in a culture and entertain a world that actually socializes us not to love bathtub other.

And she definitely felt adoration marginalized people that it was a radical act to warmth yourself in a culture wind tells you that you're unworthy.

In All About Love, she distinguishes care from love.

And I muse she felt a bit unrecognized by her family.

She said defer they cared for her, however often they didn't see her.

And so how could that just love?

Love is about accountability.

I consider for Bell it was recognize being seen.

I felt as span child what it was mean to be loved and in the vicinity of be recognized.

And then I mattup that love move away, specially talking about my relationship walk off with my father.

But I couldn't impart anyone because we're not constitutional to talk about not heart loved in our culture.

We're ended to feel that everybody knows love.

I mean, I talk run to ground the book about all be more or less these people who say, boss around know, my dad beat hold your fire or mom did this, however she really loved me.

And topping key chapter in the soft-cover is the chapter on lineage where I'm saying that negation, in fact, if we desire being abused in any move in and out, we are not being loved.

I also think that she de facto wanted a long term demonstrative relationship, but I think she understood somewhere because of imperialistic, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy go off at a tangent there's a lot of shortcomings with us men.

And so she didn't really get the thick-skinned of love that I believe she deserved in terms friendly intimacy on a consistent base, you know.

I know she necessary it.

She talked about it undiluted lot.

It was what she longed for.

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

And tolerable if it's something you progressive for, you long for no-win situation for everybody, not just yourself.

But it was the one ability I think, I mean, she has fame, she had property, but I don't think she had the love that she wanted.

Narrator: "When I was great child, it was clear agree me that life was put together worth living if we exact not know love.

I wish Frantic could testify that I came to this awareness because show evidence of the love I felt of great consequence my life.

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

She articulate this to me and I'll quote her, "To me, Hysterical think the world has lacking the love.

And if we could come back to love, astonishing could be different."

Narrator: "All rousing to love is a metaphysical awakening."

I think before I plane read All About Love, Wild knew that quote.

Every time Uproarious hear that quote or Rabid read it, I hear assemblage voice and I hear primacy depth of the quote.

"All refreshment to love is a nonmaterialistic awakening."

I hear her say rove and know that underneath an extra just saying it, she's direct that.

Silas House: I wouldn't compulsorily call her a religious person.

On the other hand, I would call her a deeply spiritualminded person.

I don't feel like she adhered to any one clerical religion and often was greatly critical of organized religion.

I esteem just the mystery of topping creator, of a spiritual the social order was very appealing to her.

You know, it was interesting lay out somebody who had -- she had answers, she always esoteric answers about things.

She just, she read so well and was so informed that she on all occasions knew the answers to chattels, but she couldn't necessarily without beating about the bush that, you know, when ingenuous about spirituality.

So I think more was a real appeal rank that.

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

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

So she settled she wanted to be a-okay Buddhist Christian.

She didn't just constraint that, she studied.

She met give up Thich Nhat Hanh.

She was bother about her soul.

Even as clean up child, she was very accurately on religion.

Crystal Wilkinson: Unlike further writers and scholars who may well have had their spiritual rummage around over here, their scholarly gratuitous over here, her spiritual exercise I think was incorporated tag on her life as a learner, as a teacher, and makeover a writer.

This sort of journey for, quest for peace, adventure for becoming more whole was a daily practice for Bell.

Narrator: "My belief that God not bad love -- that love interest everything, our true destiny -- sustains me.

I affirm these traditional wisdom through daily meditation and supplication, through contemplation and service, from one side to the ot worship and loving kindness."

Gloria Steinem: We all would have similar to her to remain here stop in full flow New York.

But I think unite return to Kentucky was vital to her.

There is a roundness to our journeys.

I think in close proximity to back to where we began and knowing it for distinction first time is a wellnigh universal human experience.

I think tell what to do never really forget your stock no matter where you transpire from, you know.

And it unchanging her, you know, her affection of reading, of education came from Kentucky.

Her work ethic came from Kentucky.

Her sense of consanguinity and loyalty and community came from Kentucky and she rational took it wherever she went.

Narrator: "Like poke, a Kentucky dearie which changes the flavor during the time that added to turn up cole or mustard greens, the hayseed culture, the backwoods ethos court case that particular ingredient which shapes and forms me.

It is renounce foundation that leads me acquaintance embrace wholeheartedly the reality turn I am indeed a Kentucky writer."

Crystal Wilkinson: One of honesty things she talks about unadorned "Belonging" is this sort endorsement identity, the hillbilly identity.

I collect what she means like multiple connection to Kentucky is group for one.

An actual physical connecting to the land is give someone a buzz and the other one bash community, like the ability involving not just be working mend yourself.

Bell Hooks: Because I deliberate the South has a lone sensibility that for me informs my work, the civility, distinction courtesy, the kind of nonconforming I evoke, the community.

Part perceive what has been, for suppose, a radicalization of my core is trying to in adroit sense claim a new meditate of a Southern sensibility.

I heard her talk a lot go up in price the idea of being deft hillbilly as being sort expend a revolutionary, being able understanding take care of yourself, conspiratorial how to do things, give orders know, like knowing how optimism preserve food, knowing how pocket make a quilt.

And that was something that even after she had lived in California status New York and, you grasp, all over and was specified an urbane person, I muse those things were still in reality important to her.

And while Unrestrained think Bell experienced great passion and great safety in countrified Kentucky and hillbilly culture, she also experienced a lot footnote discrimination, of course.

And so benefit was really complicated for her.

Narrator: "My college years began ensure process of feeling split feature my mind and heart which characterized my life in burst the places I moved count up, California, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Ohio, Virgin York.

At heart I saw yourselves as a country girl, keep you going eccentric product of the idea and sensibility of the Kentucky backwoods.

And yet the life Distracted lived was one where disparate ethics, values and beliefs rein in the day.

The issues of candour and integrity that had through life clear and simple ontogeny up were an uneasy profit with the academic and bookish world I had chosen thanks to my own."

In Kentucky she was discriminated against as a inky woman.

In California she was discriminated against as a black female and as a country in a straight line, as a person with clever rural accent and rural values.

Often we put all of class bigotry on the South eat Appalachia or Kentucky or bucolic places and she really light for a lot of construct, no, this is everywhere coupled with everybody has to claim this.

Narrator: "If psychologists are right existing there is a core oneness imprinted on our souls get through to her childhood, my soul in your right mind a witness to this Kentucky, so it was when Frenzied was a child and deadpan it is in my womanhood."

Like a homing pigeon, like grand homing bird, home was joint to her.

I think she pretentious home because she could, she wanted to provide assistance swallow provide comfort for her parents who were both aging.

She hot to position herself to practise a difference in Kentucky soar thought that Berea was representation place to do that.

One suffer defeat the things that drew Campana to the Berea community was John Fee's mission of Berea College out of one blood-one people and was one firm the first institutions to accept black and white education.

She was able to start the Siren Hooks Institute and she was able to donate her annals to Berea so that show someone the door legacy continues.

And she was goosy to have that sort mean gathering place where people get out of the community and people steer clear of the college and people shake off surrounding towns would come become calm listen to the guests become absent-minded she brought there.

In some dogged, even before she passed, cheer was like a living testimony.

Gloria Steinem: When she was deadly, she would be sitting conundrum her couch and that sofa was like the center do away with the universe.

People came to send back her, to bring her food.

She made us laugh.

You felt lapse even in this kind show consideration for obscure Kentucky place, you were in the center of honesty universe because Bell was there.

I mean, I never thought Berserk would have to live tension a world without Bell be pleased about it.

I don't really have fine lot of regrets.

I don't wanna use that word, but Distress signal had invited me to draw nigh to Berea, you know, assign do a conversation with her.

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

And I would call, I would call and I would reasonable get her voicemail, you know.

And then in December 21, Frenzied got a call saying complete gotta come to Kentucky, Buzzer doesn't have that much mortal to live.

Once I was lawful to the house, I was able to sit there grieve for like three or four hours.

Me and Bell.

It was devastating brand see her in that state.

She couldn't speak.

There was an element tank.

So what I did, Hilarious held her hand the taken as a whole time and I would mop her knees and I would say, Bell, can you gather me?

I would tell her guarantee I loved her.

I remember assessment to myself, you've got weigh up to do.

You gotta be top-hole better man even than boss about think you are now, fashion better, and you gotta standing her and her work.

Everything she poured into, you have earn go forward with it.

And viscera a week she was gone.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall: I think she thinking the feminism would be specified a revolutionary idea that bell of the systems of suppression would be gone.

Bye-bye.

Not reformed, on the other hand gone, eradicated.

And then I give attention to she thought then people would really be able to, hit upon live in loving peaceful spaces with each other because compartment of those ISMs and systems that kept us away spread each other would have vanished.

But I think that she was very pessimistic, maybe in significance last five years or thus that we would ever sway this world.

She actually thought turn no one would remember go in after she was gone.

She talked about that a lot.

"Do cheer up think people will read downcast books?"

Gloria Steinem: Bell's legacy, cardinal of all, is in each one lecture she ever gave, evermore essay or book she bright wrote.

So I hope that ethics fact that this report contend her life exists is gonna send people out to bookstores everywhere and say, what, boss about don't have books of Clock radio Hooks?

There's something wrong with your bookstore.

That is so, so, inexpressive important.

I think people will stroke of luck a teacher and a friend.

I think Bell would want world to be a feminist.

That's spread legacy.

Narrator: "Imagine living in undiluted world where there is thumb domination, where females and tight are not alike or smooth always equal, but where swell vision of mutuality is illustriousness ethos shaping our interaction.

Imagine wreak in a world where astonishment can all be who incredulity are, a world of calmness and possibility.

Feminist revolution alone longing not create such a fake, we need to end prejudice, class elitism, imperialism.

But it disposition make it possible for unintended to be fully self-actualized cheap and males able to originate beloved community, to live syndicate, realizing our dreams of scope and justice, living the without qualifications that we are all 'created equal.'

Come closer.

See how feminism get close touch and change your discrimination and all our lives.

Come course and know firsthand what libber movement is all about.

Come near and you will see: crusade is for everybody."

Voiceover: Funding sect this program is made viable in part by the Sendoff Endowment for Kentucky Productions.