A group of UW-Superior community members gathered in the Jim Dan Hill Library on Valentine’s Day to celebrate the life, scholarship, and activism of bell hooks, the recently deceased feminist scholar and prolific author. We gathered on Valentine’s Day to underline bell hooks’ theoretical foundation of love.

Born Gloria Jean Watkins, bell hooks took her maternal grandmother’s name after an incident at a local store. She tells the story in her book Talking Back:

I was a young girl buying bubble gum at the corner store when I first really heard the name bell hooks. I had just talked back to a grown person. Even now I can recall the surprised look, the mocking tones that informed me I must be kin to bell hooks—a sharp-tongued woman, a woman who spoke her mind, a woman who was not afraid to talk back. I claimed this legacy of defiance, of will, of courage, affirming my link to female ancestors who were bold and daring in their speech.

UWS librarian Stephanie Warden introduced hooks’ work by emphasizing that hooks’ defiance was an act of love:

It takes a great deal of will, a great deal of courage, a great deal of love to say the things that nobody wants to hear, especially people who control your grades, your employability, and in a very real way your quality of life.

Attendees honored hooks by sharing passages that affected and inspire them. Dr. Hilary Fezzey read from Teaching to Transgress, in which teachers are seen as healers, noting that the classroom is a radical space of possibility in which the personal lives of students are as important as the material of learning. Student Emma Hellerud read poetry from When Angels Speak of Love and emphasized love of language. After several other readings, Dr. Mary Lee-Nichols concluded by reading from hooks’ children’s book Happy to be Nappy, a celebration of black hair in response to cultural misunderstandings and devaluation of black women’s hair in particular.

We encourage you to check out the Jim Dan Hill Library curated collection of bell hooks’ work, which can also be viewed online.

Do you have an idea for a CLIC@JDHL Blog post? Click here and let us know!

Remember to Subscribe so you never miss a new post!