Remembering bell hooks: A Legacy of Radical Love and Intellectual Freedom

“I am driven to write, compelled by a constant longing to choreograph, to bring words together in patterns and configurations that move the spirit.” —bell hooks.

I first met bell hooks in 2014 when she became a primary collaborator in developing a concept I call the D.J. Scholarship. This idea sought to reposition the role of the D.J. from being merely a party purveyor to that of an archivist, cultural custodian, and information specialist of music with critical value. It emerged from a commissioned mixtape, “Soulful Critical Thought: bell hooks and the Making of a D.J. Scholar.” Through this project, I curated a collection of sounds that represented hooks— within and beyond her written work.

bell hooks was a genius—vulnerable, complex, sharp, and unapologetically herself. She moved through the world with courage, discipline, and dedication, creating space for others like myself to exist fully and authentically. Placing her ideas on the turntables was like creating a soundtrack of her intellectual rigor and emotional range. The mixtape led to invitations to visit her in Berea, Kentucky, where we shared meals, exchanged intimate stories, and discussed our visions for the future. In her home, she pointed out her most cherished possessions: books, kitchen, and meditation space.

A Scholar’s Legacy

During her final years, when her health declined, I often visited bell hooks. Knowing she was alone, I sent her poetry and tinctures. We spoke over the phone, and she confided her fears about dying alone and not wanting to be just another Black woman scholar who dies prematurely—quoted and remembered in archives but not fully honored for her complexity.

The legacy of bell hooks is urgent and demands attention. We owe her the same scholarly care reserved for male intellectuals like Frederick Douglass and Frantz Fanon, for bell was equally profound and prolific. We hold her memory close alongside figures like Toni Morrison, whose work she studied in her 1983 dissertation. hooks was also a pivotal influence in the groundbreaking scholarship of Saidiya Hartman, who served as her teaching assistant at Yale. Her writing is a testament to the passionate poetics of Black performance and thought.

A Radical Voice for Black Feminism

bell hooks was an educator and public intellectual who hand-wrote the first drafts of all her books. She crafted critical lectures inspired by her maternal great-grandmother and namesake, bell Sarah hooks, born in 1893. hooks emerged from a lineage of Black Southern women whose sharecropping feminism shaped her voice—a voice that challenged us to envision more freedom.

Her belief in radical love was one strategy to achieve this freedom. hooks provided Black women a new framework to understand the life of the mind as a foundation for activism and personal transformation. She forced us to confront how patriarchy manifests even in our mothers’ faces and brought fresh language to our critique of popular culture, revealing how the legacy of slavery persists in the American imagination.

The Interconnectedness of Oppression

To label bell hooks merely as a cultural critic would be reductive. Her insistence that “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” is an active system that affects us all means that imagined freedom is for everyone or no one. This concept is a challenge she conveyed through multiple disciplines—as a critic, film scholar, literary professor, and public intellectual. Her radical insistence that imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy are interconnected remains as relevant today as W.E.B. Du Bois’ prediction that the central problem of the 20th century would be the color line.

We owe her for the intellectual curiosity that wrapped around the Black people she touched with her theoretical insights. She drew upon leftist literature, Buddhist psychology, soulful arguments, and impactful interventions against racial and gendered capitalism. bell hooks offered us a compass to navigate our way out of darkness. We all discovered parts of ourselves in the breadth of interests she explored through her reading, writing, and listening practices.

The Importance of Care in Black Feminist Thought

Anyone engaging with her work must delve deeper into understanding care as an inherent part of Black feminist collective memory. She often said that if a theory isn’t life-changing, it deserves less attention. In her later years, she focused on love and mystery, surrounding herself with mystery books in every room and practicing rituals to cope with uncertainty, solitude, and the fatigue of the pandemic. These rituals sustained her through the changing seasons.

December deaths are particularly harsh; they bring the quiet reflection of winter. Like Greg Tate, James Brown, and Teena Marie, who left us around the same time, bell hooks’ passing feels especially poignant. When I learned of her declining condition and held her hand during her final days, I thanked her for everything she gave to me—and all of us—before she transitioned to her pre-Kentucky winter home.

A Lasting Impact

bell hooks was a central figure in Black feminist thought, urging us to reconsider how we understand our world and ourselves. She emphasized the freedom to teach while being unapologetically Black and pro-Black, reflecting love by honoring the Black women writers and scholars who shared her intellectual space. She demonstrated the power of love in teaching and scholarship, giving us the tools to critique, analyze, and imagine new worlds.

Denise is an artist, scholar, writer, and DJ whose work reflects on underground cultural movements. An L.A. native, she is the Sterling Brown ’22 Visiting Professor of Africana Studies at Williams College.