Teach People To Love Justice: Honoring bell hooks

“We can’t combat white supremacy unless we can teach people to love justice. You have to love justice more than your allegiance to your race, sexuality and gender. It is about justice.”

(bell hooks)

Yesterday, the world lost a shining light.

bell hooks, “the feminist author, poet, theorist and cultural critic, has died at the age of 69 at her home in Berea, Kentucky. Her works, including Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, All About Love, Bone Black, Feminist Theory and Communion: The Female Search for Love, were beacons for a generation of writers and thinkers in academia and beyond…born Gloria Jean Watkins, the name "bell hooks" is borrowed from her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks.”

“The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.”

(bell hooks)

“She attended segregated schools in her native Christian County, Ky., before earning her undergraduate degree at Stanford University in California, a master's degree in English at the University of Wisconsin and a doctorate in literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

She taught at Stanford University, Yale University, Oberlin College in Ohio and the City College of New York before returning to Kentucky to teach at Berea College, which now houses the bell hooks center.

Frequently, hooks' work addressed the deep intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality and geographic place.”

Her presence, wisdom and unflinching vision will be missed.

May we all continue to be inspired by her words and do our part to create the world she knew was possible, in the classroom and beyond.

“education was about the practice of freedom.”

(bell hooks)