She spreads her words, herself, all over the place.Īll that intensity, it goes somewhere. In writing, by writing, bell hooks refuses to be confined. I hid these writings under my bed, in pillow stuffings, among faded underwear” (1988, 6-7). I could not confine my speech to the necessary corners and concerns of life. And so, I wrote down bits and pieces of conversations, confessing in cheap diaries that soon fell apart from too much handling, expressing the intensity of my sorrow, the anguish of speech, for I was always saying the wrong thing, asking the wrong questions. In Talking Back: Thinking Feminism, Thinking Black, hooks wrote of writing as “a way to capture speech, to hold on to it, keep it close. Words are coming out because of what you gave to the world. Or, you can meet someone through what they gave to the world. For me, it takes time for words to come, to get to a point when I can say something about losing someone. I read what others wrote, grateful that for some of us grief does not take away the capacity for description. When bell hooks died, I couldn’t bring myself to write about her, what her work meant to me, to the students I have taught over many years, to those with whom I share a political project and community. I am deeply indebted to bell hooks for teaching me this – and so much else, besides. To be a feminist is to make feminism your lifework. A lifework: the entire or principal activity over a person’s lifetime or career.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |