yam goodies: 16 reflections on Black Self-Recovery as told by bell hooks

Source: https://www.laprogressive.com/racism/warm-heart-storyteller

a dupe egun.

we give thanks to the ancestors.

Spending some time this morning revisiting some of my favorite chapters from “Sisters of the Yam” written by warrior, truthsayer, and seer bell hooks. It has been almost a full year since her transition date (December 15, 2021) and her energy will be forever missed and longed for. And even still, she keeps holding us down! We give thanks to bell hooks who is continuing to support and guide us from the ancestral realm. Here’s 16 quotes that serve as healing portals for continual revisiting, reflection, and realignment.

Source: https://www.alumnipark.com/exhibits/featured/bell-hooks/

1) “Black female self-recovery, like all black self-recovery, is an expression of a liberatory political practice. Living as we do in a white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal context that can best exploit us when we lack a firm grounding in self and identity (knowledge of who we are and where we have come from), choosing “wellness” is an act of political resistance. Before many of us can effectively sustain engagement in organized resistance struggle, in black liberation movement, we need to undergo a process of self-recovery that can heal individual wounds that may prevent us from functioning fully.” (Intro/Healing Darkness 7).

Source: https://www.thehindu.com/society/bell-hooks-feminist-sister-ally/article38077657.ece

2) “Over-burdened and over-extended, stress is the body’s response to carrying more than it can bear. When we are trying to do more than we can, confront more than we could possibly cope within several lifetimes, we end up feeling that our lives are out of control, that we can only “keep a hold on life” by managing and controlling….When we feel that we can no longer assert meaningful, transformative agency in our lives, when we are doing too much, when we experience an ongoing impending sense of doom, constant anxiety, and worry, stress has invaded our lives and taken over. Without even knowing quite how it happened, we have forgotten what it feels like to live without debilitating stress. (Chapter 4/Knowing Peace 39 - 40).

Sourced: https://www.britannica.com/biography/bell-hooks

3) “Knowing when to quit is linked to knowing one’s value. If Black women have not learned to value our bodies then we cannot respond fully to endangering them by undue stress. Since society rewards us most, indicates that we are valuable, when we are willing to push ourselves to the limit and beyond, we need a life-affirming practice, a counter-system of valuation in order to resist this agenda. (Chapter 4/Knowing Peace 42).

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/1999/02/09/what-bell-hooks-had-to-say-about-the-state-of-feminism-in-1999/

4) “We are only able to make lifestyle choices that enhance well-being and reduce or eliminate debilitating stress if we believe we deserve to live well. Most Black women do not have this sense of “entitlement.” We are not raised to believe that living well is our birthright. Yet, it is. We have to claim this birthright. Doing so automatically creates a change in perspective that act as an intervention on the stress in our lives.” (Chapter 4/Knowing Peace 45)

Source: https://www.varsity.co.uk/arts/23895

5) “We cannot deny the experience of addiction. And how this feeds into and fulfills the aim of the white-supremacist capitalistic patriarchy system of domination and control. To confront addiction in our lives, to engage in a process of self-recovery, Black women must break through all the forms of denial that lead us to pretend that we are always in control of our lives, that we don’t go “crazy,” that we don’t abuse substances. (Chapter 5/Growing Away From Addiction 52).

Source: https://www.middlechurch.org/event/bell-hooks-taught-me-a-five-week-celebration-of-her-work/2022-03-01/

6) “We come from a long line of ancestors who knew how to heal the wounded Black psyche when it was assaulted by white-supremacist beliefs. Those powerful survival strategies haves been handed down from generation to generation. They exist. And though a working public knowledge of them has been suppressed, we can bring this old knowledge out of dusty attics, closets of the mind where we have learned to hide our ghosts away, and relearn useful habits of thinking and being.” (Chapter 6 Dreaming Ourselves Dark and Deep 61)

Source: https://www.cityarts.net/event/tribute-to-bell-hooks/

7) “Clearly, if Black women want to be about the business of collective self healing, we have to be about the business of inventing all manner of images and representations that show us the way we want to be and are.” (Chapter 6 Dreaming Ourselves Dark and Deep 62)

Source: https://hoptownchronicle.org/hopkinsville-to-celebrate-bell-hooks-legacy-during-womens-history-month/

8) “If internalized racism enters the souls of Black folks through years of socialization then we are not going to be rid of it by simply giving shallow expressions to the notion that Black is beautiful. We must live in our bodies in such a way that we daily indicate that Black is beautiful. We must talk about Blackness differently. And we cannot do any of this constructive action without first loving Blackness. To love ourselves, our Blackness, we must be constantly vigilant, working to resist white-supremacist thinking and internalized racism. For some of us, this means cutting down the number of hours we watch television so that we are not subjected to forms of subliminal socialization shaping how we see the world. It means searching for decolonized Black individuals who by the way they live and work demonstrate their love of Blackness, their care of the self. Our love of Blackness is strengthened by their presence.” (Chapter 6 Dreaming Ourselves Dark and Deep 73)

bell hooks — Source: www.shanirealey.com

9) “an erotic metaphysics evokes a vision of life that links our sense of self with communion and community. It is based on the assumption that we become more fully who we are in the act of loving.” (Chapter 8 Moved by Passion 86)

Source: https://www.spelman.edu/about-us/news-and-events/our-stories/stories/2021/12/17/spelman-colleges-celebrates-the-brilliance-of-literary-legend-bell-hooks

10) “Just as breaking through denial is an initial stage in the healing process in other areas of our lives, it is equally true that Black women will not be able to heal the wounded dimensions of our erotic lives until we assert our right to healing pleasure. Some of us are unable to imagine and create spaces of pleasure in our lives. When we are always busy meeting the needs of others, or when we are “used to pain,” we lose sight of the way in which the ability to experience and know pleasure is an essential ingredient of wellness. Erotic pleasure requires of us engagement with the realm of the senses, a willingness to pause in our daily life transactions and enjoy the world around us.” (Chapter 8 Moved by Passion 87)

Source: https://disorient.co/bell-hooks/

11) “The focus on building community necessarily challenges a culture of domination that privileges individual well-being over collective effort. The rise of narcissistic individualism among Black people has undermined traditional emphasis on community. The culture of poverty that led to the development of a strong ethic of communism among the Black poor, an emphasis on sharing skills and resources, is swiftly eroding. In part, television plays a tremendous role in advancing both the cause of individualism and the identification of the poor with the values and ethos of the ruling class….” (Chapter 10 Sweet Communion 117)

12) “Breaking with traditional patriarchal thinking, and the negative masculine identity it promotes, would enable Black men to take seriously their mental health and well-being. If Black people disinvest from the patriarchal notion that “real” men do not need to address their emotional life and their psychic wellbeing, we can begin to create strategies for social chance that will enhance Black male life and as a consequence all our lives. As more Black men become critical of sexism and seek to reconstruct masculinity we will see a change in the quality of Black male life.” (Chapter 10 Sweet Communion 118)

Source: https://www.uvureview.com/news/front-page/scholar-bell-hooks-says-love-decolonize-mind/

13) “Collective Black self-recovery, and the self-recovery of Black women in particular, must have a feminist dimension if Black women want to accurately name the factors, the forces of domination, that undermine Black life. Until masses of Black women understand what sexism is and how it leads to the denigration and devaluation of Black womanhood and Black life, there will be no collective understanding of the ways in which life-threatening patriarchy, misogyny, and male domination are destructive forces in our lives that must be challenged and changed. (Chapter 10 Sweet Communion 119)

Source: https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/bell-hooks-has-died

14) “When we remain unreconciled with those who have hurt us, it is usually a sign that we have not fully reconciled with ourselves. When we give ourselves love and peace, we give these gifts to others. It’s really impossible to live a life in love while hoping that harm and hurt will come to others.” (Chapter 11 The Joy of Reconciliation 126)

Source: https://www.tampabay.com/life-culture/arts/books/2021/12/15/writer-actvist-bell-hooks-dies-at-69/

15) “Were all Black people to collectively release the feelings of bitterness we hold towards one another, there would be a great renewal of spiritual strength. Compassion and forgiveness make reconciliation possible. Compassion combines the capacity to empathize with another’s distress and the will and desire to ease that distress. As Black women learn how to ease the distress we feel, our ability to generously give to others (not as self-sacrificing martyrs) will be strengthened. We will then have no need to control and bind others to us by always reminding them about what we have done on their behalf. Rather than seeing giving care as diminishing us, we will experience the kind of caregiving that enriches the giver. When we feel like martyrs, we cannot develop compassion. For compassion requires that we be able to stand outside ourselves and identify with someone else. It is fundamentally rooted in the ability to empathize. (Chapter 11 The Joy of Reconciliation 129)

Source: https://www.ebar.com/story.php?id=311421

16) “If Black women look at the world from a conventional negative perspective that would have us all believe there is only this little bit of anything good to go around and we must fight to get our part, then we can’t really love one another. Black women who see the world as one big system of diminishing returns can only feel a constant fear that someone else’s gain means that they will suffer deprivation. This way of thinking mirrors the overall rise in cultural narcissism and narrow notions of individualism that are life-threatening to Black people beauce we need an ethic of communalism to live in dignity and integrity. And Black women must be willing to take a major role in communicating this fact to the world.” (Chapter 11 The Joy of Reconciliation 131)