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“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as an escape.”

—Bell Hooks

“White women and black men have it both ways. They can act as oppressor or be oppressed. Black men may be victimized by racism, but sexism allows them to act as exploiters and oppressors of women. White women may be victimized by sexism, but racism enabled them to act as exploiters and oppressors of black people. Both groups have led liberation movements that favor their interests and support the continued oppression of other groups. Black male sexism has undermined struggles to eradicate racism just as white female racism undermines feminist struggle. As long as these two groups or any group defines liberation as gaining social equality with ruling class white men, they have a vested interest in the continued exploitation and oppression of others.”

—bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From margin to center

bell hooks resources

Some of the work bell hooks’ has done as available on the internet for personal education and reference. Certain books that were up are gone and I’m looking about finding them again. In the meantime if you need them, contact me by leaving a message with your email address in the submissions box and I’ll email them to you. If you find anything, please contact me as well. The most updated version of this list will always be here.

To note, this is meant in particular for those people who’d like to educate themselves but don’t have the resources to get these books for themselves. bell hooks has put a lot of work into these, and it would be horrible if you could afford to buy the books and didn’t.

Edit as of 19th April, 2013: list updated and alphabetized. Many thanks to wretchedoftheearth, elainecastillo, grim-dark, erosum, mmmajestic, andreaisace, ebookcollective, cantbereallif and ericstoller who all helped add links and resources.

“All white women in this nation know that their status is different from that of black women/women of color. They know this from the time they are little girls watching television and seeing only their images. They know that the only reason nonwhites are absent/invisible is because they are not white. All white women in this nation know that whiteness is a privileged category. The fact that white females may choose to repress or deny this knowledge does not mean they are ignorant: it means that they are in denial.”

—bell hooks

“Many people want love to function like a drug, giving them an immediate and sustained high. They want to do nothing, just passively receive the good feeling.”

—bell hooks

“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”

—bell hooks

“Students who considered themselves socialists were not so much interested in the poor as they were desirous of leading the poor, of being their guides and saviors. It was just this paternalism toward the poor that the vision of solidarity I had learned in religious settings was meant to challenge. From a spiritual perspective, the poor were there to guide and lead the rest of us by example if not by outright action and testimony. As a student I read Marx, Gramsci, and a host of other male thinkers on the subject of class. These works provided theoretical paradigms but rarely offered tools for confronting the complexity of class in daily life. [...] [W]hen I told friends and colleagues that I was resigning from my academic job to focus on writing, I was warned that I was making a dangerous mistake, that I could not possibly live on an income that was between twenty and thirty thousand dollars a year. When I pointed to the reality that families of four and more live on such an income, the response would be “that’s different”; the difference being, of course, one of class. The poor are expected to live with less and are socialized to accept less (badly made clothing, products, food, etc.), whereas the well-off are socialized to believe it is both a right and a necessity for us to have more, to have exactly what we want when we want it.”

—bell hooks, where we stand: Class Matters, chapter 4

“We have all heard the maxim "If you do not love yourself, you will be unable to love anyone else." It sounds good. Yet more often than not we feel some degree of confusion when we har this statement. The confusion arises because most people who think they are not lovable have this perception because at some point in their lives they were socialized to see themselves as unlovable by forces outside their control. We are not born knowing how to love anyone, either ourselves or somebody else. However, we are born able to respond to care. As we grow we can give and receive attention, affection, and joy. Whether we learn how to love ourselves and others will depend on the presence of a loving environment.”

—Bell Hooks, All About Love

“Individual heterosexual women came to the movement from relationships where men were cruel, unkind, violent, unfaithful. Many of these men were radical thinkers who participated in movements for social justice, speaking out on behalf of the workers, the poor, speaking out on behalf of racial justice. However when it came to the issue of gender they were as sexist as their conservative cohorts.”

—

bell hooks

This quote is never not relevant. Sexism maintains its threshold on all sides of the political spectrum.

“No history books used in public schools informed us about racial imperialism. Instead we were given romantic notions of the "New World," the "American Dream," America as the great melting pot where all races come together as one. We were taught that Columbus *discovered* America; that "Indians" were scalp-hunters, killers of innocent women and children; that black people were enslaved because of the biblical curse of Ham, that God "himself" had decreed that they would be hewers of wood, tilers of the field, and bringers of water. No one talked of Africa as the cradle of civilization, of African and Aian people who came to America before columbus. No one mentioned Mass murders of Native Americans and African women as terrorism. No one described the force breeding of white wives to increase the white population as sexist oppression.”

—bell hooks: Racism and Feminism

“Lifestyle feminism ushered in the notion that there could be as many versions of feminism as there were women. Suddenly the politics was being slowly removed from feminism. And the assumption prevailed that no matter what a woman's politics, be she conservative or liberal, she too could fit feminism into her existing lifestyle. Obviously this way of thinking has made feminism more acceptable because its underlying assumption is that women can be feminists without fundamentally challenging or changing themselves or the culture.”

—bell hooks (Feminism is for Everybody)
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