Tag: bell hooks
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Keep grump, groan, growl!
Once we suffered their desires, camps where children play, not childish games but adult ways. Now we grump, groan, growl. Not as they want, but to let our wild moods out, Let these feelings be. We read bell hooks today. Stood by the mirror and let her words slide through us. There will be days…
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Keep undoing
I imagine undoing, ending, the woman killing memories of girlhood, in me, unafraid, believing, in nothing, just loosening, trouble, rustling pain, embracing, love, all buried within, like snow, falling rain, liberating my mind Loving this day, I begin, opening, to you, only you, see only you can begin this I imagine, undoing. The bits and…
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Keep healing our wounds!
In killing rage, bell hooks talked about the need to heal our wounds. Not to be misconstrued with moments where we survive with grace, elegance, or beauty, but rather the wounds that are often hidden or fundamentally traumatic. Living and coping with the ongoing pandemic is fundamentally traumatic and we are all not okay. I…
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Keep writing!
Like many, I have been reading and rereading all the bell hooks books I have in my possession. I have been struck with how urgent her work is for those desperate for word work that awakens us all to our possibilities. bell hooks was a prolific writer. As I looked through her writings, I gathered…
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Keep the eternal gifts of bell hooks!
Sixty-nine seems like a very odd age to rest. My dad left at sixty-nine. I have never felt completely at ease with it. We are all supposed to have 70 years. 80 years if we are strong. So leaving at 69 just doesn’t sit right with me. bell hooks left at 69. I am sure…
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Keep vespers (II) or an evening prayer for bell hooks!
I took my time to write this. Good people are remembered as a blessing. So I wanted to take my time to remember your blessings. For you have indeed blessed us all bell. Your blessings give life like a fountain of water. So I knew I had to take my time to write this. I…
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Keep looking as you gift yourself the power to say no!
We come home to ourselves. Our realized desiring selves. We also come home to spaces that are loving, spaces that are giving, spaces that are nurturing, spaces full of awareness, spaces that enable looking. Of all these spaces, looking is my keep for today. Bell Hooks once described a power in looking. A power also…
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Keep Pidgin English and other broken English in mind!
Bell Hooks took me on a journey today. The past few days have been full of work-related rejections with academic papers I wrote, one protocol and another a debate paper that I will dwell on another day. For now, transforming the language used by the rejectors is a profound passion. Bell Hooks reminded me of…
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Keep my journey, our journey, in mind.
I am on a mission to experience joy in my journey through life. To that, I am learning what makes me feel whole. Bell Hooks’s Sisters of Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery is leading the way too. From her, I learnt that I am moved by passion. It’s in everything I do these days. Reading…
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Keep an oppositional gaze!
There is a Black exodus happening in academia. It is female, oppressive, and recursive. The latest, Dena Simmons of Yale University. She left the university citing ‘racism and years of bullying.’ She didn’t feel ‘valued’ or ‘protected’ at Yale. I spent my Sunday afternoon reading brief but concise social media postings on Dena. They were…
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Keep silence eloquently!
I learnt the other day, the importance of being silent, eloquently. It’s mesmerizing, the audacity of silence. Coming from someone known to be a talkative, being silent is divine. I am learning this day by day. Even my husband would be proud. True story, I remember being whipped in primary school in Nigeria because I…
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