Intimacy is a vital ingredient for learning – especially when working within informal spaces. To learn from each other and be open to knowledge requires us to be vulnerable, to trust, and to be willing to actively listen openly.
– Sepake Angiama ‘Intimacy’, in ‘aneducation documenta 14’, Archive Books: Berlin, 2018
I share these books in the hopes that through study and conversation exchange occurs.
– Cauleen Smith ‘Human 3.0 Reading List 2015-2016’
bell hooks is in all our books
she blazes in titles
her face looks to us from her covers
her name is in every index between home and hope
she is a constant presence in each bibliography
all further reading points us in her direction
she whispers from every footnote
she appears in timelines of key events
she is the source of endless quotations
her teaching to transgress reappears as improper education
she is joined by Nina Simone and Silvia Federici to become Nina Bell F.
bell hooks is in all our books
except where she is not
the cold places
from where love has fled
where schools are banks
and the classroom is burning
where proud silent men sit alone
a world filled with clear plastic containers
in a damp room
under our house
bell hooks is in all our books
all our books where we are
here joined in conversation
animated by each other’s ideas
where exchange occurs
listening with care
open to who and what comes
our elastic capacity
bell hooks is in all our books
since our books are also looks
of love
In memoriam: bell hooks (1952-2021), December 16, 2021