bell hooks: Love is the heart of the matter

By Rose McIlveen

I turned to the subject of love. There is the civil rights movement. That history is so vital to remember. This generation has forgotten the sacrifices.

bell hooks

hooks said she had written a “dry little talk” for her presentation, which was organized by the IU offices of Multicultural Affairs and the Vice President for Student Development and Diversity.

“I’m really having a lovefest here,” hooks told her audience. “But my goal of late is to be the high priestess of love!” (Her latest book is Salvation: Black People and Love.)

hooks said she is deeply concerned with writing above and beyond the academy.

“I turned to the subject of love. There is the civil rights movement. That history is so vital to remember. This generation has forgotten the sacrifices.”

hooks recalled the three young civil rights activists killed in Mississippi—Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. (“How many of us,” she asked, “have stepped up to the plate and been anti-racist?”)

She told the audience that the nearly completed Neal-Marshall Center on the Bloomington campus is a “testimony” to the civil rights struggle.

“Home for us has always been a place of sanctuary,” she said. “The center should be not just a black space. It should be for everyone to build a bridge to white folks, too. There are white people who want to write about back people, but don’t want to know any of them.”

“I urge you to make use of the Neal-Marshall Center,” she said.. “Love is the heart of the matter—love sustains—and dialog is the wave of the future.”

Asked about the role of love in the classroom, she replied that the important elements are caring, knowledge, responsibility, trust and respect.

“How can I know you if I can never remember your name?” she asked. “I believe in the transforming power of love.”

Hooks is Distinguish Professor of English at City College and the Graduate Center of the City University in New York. She was a professor of English at Yale University and Oberlin College. Among her 20 books are Ain’t I a Woman: Black and Feminism, Thinking Black, Teaching to Transgress, Killing Rage-Ending Racism and All About Love: New Visions.