Transcript:

Hello internet friends. I’m experimenting today with doing a micro cast. I have this capability on my website and I thought I would go ahead and try it.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to talk about. But I just looked at Twitter and my timeline is full of people grieving for the loss of bell hooks. I have read a lot of a little of the work of bell hooks and I have not read as much as I would like to have read of the work of bell hooks.

The part I have probably read the most of would be - Oh, now I can’t remember the title of the book but it’s about writing - Remembered Rapture. And I started reading that because Kelly J. Baker mentioned it in an essay she wrote about writing. And I had to return it to the library before I was done with it. I haven’t picked it back up.

I am planning to purchase it from Rofhiwa Books and Cafe here in Durham, North Carolina, which is a bookstore you should check out. It is a Black-owned bookstore that focuses on the work of Black authors. It’s where I picked up my copy of Ebony Elizabeth Thomas’s book The Dark Fantastic and I will probably get Remembered Rapture and maybe Feminism Is for Everybody. And All about Love I think is the title of another one that I will - that I will probably pick up.

Anyway Remembered Rapture is the one I’ve read the most of. And not only is the language hooks uses just, you know, incredibly beautiful in it. But the way she talks about her identity as a writer and about the ways that she has integrated being different kinds of writer - being an academic writer, and being a poet, writing essays, all of the different kinds of writing she has done - and how it has been not hard for her to do but hard for other people to accept from her, especially as a Black woman, is just really moving and inspiring to me.

I apologize for any background noises you may hear. There’s always someone doing yard work by my house so I probably will never be able to record anything without that being a risk. But I wanted to go ahead and get this down now. Before I forgot.

I don’t have a lot more to say on this topic. I look forward to reading more of her work. I’m sorry that what we have now is all that we will have of her work. And I send so much love to people who are grieving her more deeply than I ever could. Thank you for listening.