I first encountered the work of bell hooks when I was 14 years old, sitting on my Nana’s porch, complaining about the mosquitoes and the heat.

My Nana, likely frustrated by my constant complaints about boredom, handed me a copy of Ain’t I A Woman and told me to “shut up and read.” I distinctly remember that summer because, after reading that book, all we could talk about was bell hooks—who she was and who I wanted to become. I declared then that I wanted to be a writer, like bell hooks, and use my words to change the world.

I carried her words with me when I went to college, and by then, I had my well-worn copies of her books. I would turn to her work whenever I needed a reminder of my strength. The world felt safer with bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou leading the way, showing what it looked like for a Black woman to resist a system determined to diminish them. bell hooks’ words accompanied me everywhere, even as they guided me back to myself.

Like countless others over the past 40 years, I was deeply inspired by bell hooks, who passed away on December 15, 2021, at 69. As a leading Black intellectual, hooks expanded the feminist movement beyond the confines of white, middle-class perspectives, inviting Black and working-class voices into the conversation on gender inequality. She taught us about the pervasive systems of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, providing us with both the terminology to describe it and the strategies to dismantle it. Unlike previous generations, she encouraged Black women like me to see ourselves, claim our space, and love ourselves fiercely and unapologetically.

“No Black woman writer in this culture can write ‘too much,'” bell hooks once wrote, “Indeed, no woman writer can write ‘too much’… No woman has ever written enough.”

I used to read her words to my sons while holding them, committed to practicing “liberating parenting” and raising my Black sons as Black feminists.

I had the honor of meeting bell hooks several times as an activist, an officer of the National Women’s Studies Association, and a scholar of African American studies. I listened to her lectures and spoke with her and found myself speechless each time. In her presence, I felt like that 14-year-old again, sitting on the porch, diving into her words and discovering myself anew.

Much like my Nana’s hugs, her words always brought me back to myself, urging, coaxing, and pushing me to become who I was meant to be.

I remember speaking her words into the wind, hoping that if I ever forgot who I was, the wind would carry them back to me. Whenever I need truth, I turn to her work. When I seek support or encouragement, I turn to her work. I turn to her work when I need a reminder to love and fight.

So when I heard, read, realized, and finally accepted that bell hooks—the genius, scholar, cultural critic, and truth-teller who bravely confronted white supremacy and racism repeatedly—had passed on to explore what lies beyond, all I could do was sit and breathe.

I am not okay.

None of us—feminists, scholars, activists, truth seekers, survivors—who have ever been touched by her work and her words are okay. Not today. Not right now, and not for a while.

It is not enough to say she saved me from silencing myself because unless you understand her genius, you might think this is just about violence and not about salvation.

It is not enough to say she saved me from burning it all down because unless you grasp her brilliance, you won’t understand how her words taught me to emerge from the fire more robust and better on the other side.

While “bell hooks,” the writer’s chosen pen name in honor of her maternal great-grandmother, bell Blair hooks, will remain with us through her extensive body of work, Gloria Jean Watkins has left this world. The sun does not shine as brightly as when she was with us.

My son called to mourn with me and asked which books I would recommend to someone unfamiliar with bell hooks or why we were grieving. I told him to start with these three and, once they’ve recovered from her words’ impact, read her other thirty-plus books and scholarly articles.

Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981)

“It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation, I choose to re-appropriate the term ‘feminism,’ to focus on the fact that to be ‘feminist’ in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression.” — Ain’t I a Woman.

In one of her most provocative works, hooks provide a clear and robust analysis of what it means to be a Black woman in a racist, misogynistic world. If you want to understand what it means to be both Black and a woman, start here and keep going.

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984)

“Our emphasis must be on cultural transformation: destroying dualism, eradicating systems of domination. Our feminist revolution here can be aided by the example of liberation struggles led by oppressed peoples globally who resist formidable powers. Forming an oppositional worldview is necessary for feminist struggle.” — Feminist Theory.

When I was in college, struggling to understand and define what it meant to be a feminist, my professor, Jane Bond Moore, gave me her copy of Feminist Theory and told me to use it as a blueprint and a guide. This book represents bell hooks at her best, wielding her pen to critique white feminism and challenge the white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

Teaching to Transgress (1994)

“Teaching to Transgress” illuminates the way for anyone who wants to use the classroom to empower students to take control of their own learning. As a former middle school teacher and current professor, I have aimed to teach students how and why they should transgress against racial, sexual, and class boundaries.

“We must continually claim theory as a necessary practice within a holistic framework of liberatory activism.” — Teaching to Transgress.

Karsonya Wise Whitehead is the executive director of the Karson Institute for Race, Peace, & Social Justice at Loyola University in Maryland.