Letter of Gratitude: bell hooks
"We must all change."
Dear bell hooks,
In the latter half of my 18th year, I was bisected by the privilege of being a Haïtian immigrant attending a University in the United States of America and my desire to be free of that weight and have fun. I wanted to enjoy and relish the spaciousness of my schedule and being a young person without parental supervision. And then, tentacles I could new foretell started tugging on my heart, the reality of attending a predominantly white institution that, at its inception, could never imagine the likes of me, stunningly brilliant. My heart was slowly breaking, and I could not hear it. I started escaping my reality by consuming stories. (Shoutout to my community member for that Netflix password and the countless K-drama translators!!!) I was disillusioned and did know I could claim the right to experience my confusion, sadness, and rage.
And then, your work came into my life. My friend introduced me to you and your work, Teaching to Transgress: Education as a Practice of Freedom. I did not understand most of what you were saying, and the context that birthed those ideas, yet something inside me felt seen and understood, or perhaps I am not alone. Encountering you at that junction in my development saved me years of trudging through confusion and slowing false narratives about who I am, what is happening to my family, community, and people, and how some of us got stuck.
I still remember the sensation of weights lifting off me as the insights and clarity poured in as I read Understanding Patriarchy. The text was precise and ready-made medicine for me. It was the first piece of theory I read that helped me make sense of MY lived experience. It was about Black people. It was about a person who moved through girlhood. It was about a little girl who experienced a profound sense of powerlessness and found a way to voice a different truth from their family/community. From that moment, a part of my knew learning could be in service to me, not my career, not my community, but ME, the unfolding being called Flore. What a gift! I wanted to share with everyone, scream, preach, and say, "See, I was hurt, I am hurt, my hurt is valid, and I do not want to hurt no more!"
Reading those first two texts revealed a kind of easily integrated learning because it was already part of my experience. I did not need to translate or extrapolate to receive what I needed to shape my life. For the first time, the version of myself firmly rooted in my family, home country, and culture was receiving love from a text by an intellectual who saw us, me, as complex and worthy of being understood and socially liberated.
If men are to reclaim the essential goodness of male being, if they are to regain the space of openheartedness and emotional expressiveness that is the foundation of well-being, we must envision alternatives to patriarchal masculinity. We must all change.
-bell hooks, Understanding Patriachy (2004)
Thank you for your words. Thank you for choosing a life of writing. Thank you for unflinchingly turning to the truth and voicing it with kindness. Thank you for being bell hooks.
Sincerely,
One of your students listening for how to love bigger.