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bell hooks on humor, routine, anger, and practice

I am new to the work of bell hooks, so I found her recent interview with the NYTimes really fascinating. I’ve pasted some snippets below. 

On humor: 

We cannot have a meaningful revolution without humor. Every time we see the left or any group trying to move forward politically in a radical way, when they’re humorless, they fail. 

Her routine: 

When I wake up at 4 or 5 in the morning, I do my prayers and meditations, and then I have what I call my “study hours.” I try to read a book a day, a nonfiction book, and then I get to read total trash for the rest of the day. 

Having a pseudonym: 

I live in a city of 12,000 people where most of them don’t have a clue about who bell hooks is for the most part, or where someone asks “Is bell hooks a person?” There is humility in the life that I lead, because one thing about having my given name, Gloria Jean, which is such a great Appalachian hillbilly name, is that I’m not walking around in my daily life usually as bell hooks. I’m walking around in the dailiness of my life as just the ordinary Gloria Jean.

On being a “public intellectual”: 

I always kind of chuckle at people labeling me a public intellectual. I chuckle because people used to say, “How have you written so much?” and I’d say, “By not having a life.” There is nothing public about the energy, the discipline and solitude it takes to produce so much writing.

On meeting Thich Nhat Hanh and his advice about anger: 

When I got to him, the first thing out of my mouth was, “I am so angry!” And he, of course, Mr. Calm himself, Mr. Peace, said, “Well, you know, hold on to your anger, and use it as compost for your garden.” And I thought, “Yes, yes, I can do that!” I tell that story to people all the time. I was telling him about the struggles I was having with my male partner at the time and he said, “It is O.K. to say I want to kill you, but then you need to step back from that, and remember what brought you to this person in the first place.” And I think that if we think of anger as compost, we think of it as energy that can be recycled in the direction of our good. It is an empowering force. If we don’t think about it that way, it becomes a debilitating and destructive force.

And the discipline that comes out of a religious practice:

Buddhism continues to inspire me because there is such an emphasis on practice. What are you doing? Right livelihood, right action…. It is the discipline that comes from spiritual practice that is the foundation of my life. If we talk about what a disciplined writer I have been and hope to continue to be, that discipline starts with a spiritual practice. It’s just every day, every day, every day.

Read the whole interview.

For those of you who are fans, which of her books should I start with?

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alex almeida from brasil

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John Baldessari I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art (1971) lithograph, 57.3 x 76.5 cm

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I need to pull myself together in a very very very kind way

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Shane Drinkwater

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CHRISTMAS MORNING, BREAKFAST, Horace Pippin, 1945

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Eme Muskan Ruggeri

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“Сотворение”

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James Zamora, The Egg Aisle, 2024

6 x 6 in

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Ed Ruscha - Hot and Cold, 2004

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you just genuinely have to not care about things to be happy like when i hear how people talk about being slighted in interpersonal contexts, my recommendation is just assume the best of people and don’t care. don’t dwell on it, don’t remember, don’t assume they were being rude, just don’t even care. don’t make generalization or judgement just genuinely move on. people who sound crazy / anxious / depressed are always recalling the past and interrogating. detach imo

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Willy Chavarria FW24 Campaign

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From 'A Breath of Life' by Clarice Lispector

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