Writers and loved ones share stories about bell hooks, 'little country girl from the hills,' at hometown memorial service

UPDATE, April 13: Berea College is hosting a livestream of its memorial service for bell hooks from 2 to 4 p.m. Thursday, April 14. Guest speakers include Gloria Steinem, Imani Perry and others.

Wendell Berry speaks at a memorial service for
Gloria Jean Watkins, who wrote under the name
bell hooks. (Hoptown Chronicle photos by Tony Kirves)

"People came from across town, from other parts of Kentucky and from as far away as New York to pay their respects Saturday to the feminist author and activist bell hooks, who was born Gloria Jean Watkins to a working-class Hopkinsville family on Sept. 25, 1952," Jennifer P. Brown reports for the Hoptown Chronicle. "They sat shoulder to shoulder in the Alhambra Theatre, a crowd of about 400 — childhood friends, literary luminaries, relatives, historians, high school classmates, civil rights activists, hometown admirers, clergy and scholars. Each one was a testament to the profound impact of hooks, the author of more than 30 books, who died Dec. 15 of renal failure at her home in Berea. She was 69."

A host of Kentucky writers paid tribute. Crystal Wilkinson, a state poet laureate and like hooks a Black woman, said hooks "had this way of turning the concepts and ideology of feminism into brilliant common sense," Brown reports. When Wilkinson first met her at a writing conference in 1993, she and the others "were listening to bell that day the way that my family used to listen to country preachers back down home."

Hopkinsville Mayor Wendell Lynch presided
at the memorial for his childhood friend.

Wendell Berry, the state's most famous author, said he felt a connection to hooks since they were both raised in rural Kentucky. "As a member of the disappearing class of agrarians," Brown writes, "Berry said he reads bell hooks with a sense of not only being spoken to, but also of being spoken for."

Novelist Silas House, who was also hooks' friend, told of when "he went to a country café with hooks. He had to wait while she went to every table and spoke to each diner. She shook hands. She patted their shoulders. She talked to them about cars and how much she liked to shop at Goodwill stores," Brown reports. When House and hooks sat down, he remarked that she must know everyone there. "She said, 'I don’t know a single one of them," said House. "'I wanted every one of them to have to speak to a Black woman today.'"

Home counties: bell hooks' Christian; Crystal Wilkinson's Casey;
Silas House's Laurel; and Wendell Berry's Henry. (Wikipedia, adapted)

House noted that hooks often called herself "a little country girl from the hills" and said she was proud of that, even though it sometimes caused her pain. "She talked about both the joy and the pain," said House. "She was troubled by Kentucky, but she also loved it fiercely. Most of all I keep thinking of that little girl — about the burst of all of that intelligence and fierceness and bravery, as she played in the hills of Christian County, Kentucky, or sat against the tree and read, or wrote in her notebooks. I keep seeing that little girl and think about the way she changed the world."