bell hooks: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations

by bell hooks, Mikki Kendall (Introduction)

"Wide-ranging and insightful, this makes for a solid primer on hooks’s ideas." --Publishers Weekly

"I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance."
—bell hooks

bell hooks was a prolific, trailblazing author, feminist, social activist, cultural critic, and professor. Born Gloria Jean Watkins, bell used her pen name to center attention on her ideas and to honor her courageous great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks.

hooks’s unflinching dedication to her work carved deep grooves for the feminist and anti-racist movements. In this collection of 7 interviews, stretching from early in her career until her last interview, she discusses feminism, the complexity of rap music and masculinity, her relationship to Buddhism, the “politic of domination,” sexuality, and love and the importance of communication across cultural borders. Whether she was sparking controversy on campuses or facing criticism from contemporaries, hooks relentlessly challenged herself and those around her, inserted herself into the tensions of the cultural moment, and anchored herself with love.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Politics, Essays, Social Justice, Biography

160 pages, Paperback

Published July 18, 2023

About the author

bell hooks (deliberately in lower-case; born Gloria Jean Watkins) was an African-American author, feminist, and social activist. Her writing focused on the interconnectivity of race, class, and gender and their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and domination. She published over thirty books and numerous scholarly and mainstream articles, appeared in several documentary films and participated in various public lectures. Primarily through a postmodern female perspective, she addressed race, class, and gender in education, art, history, sexuality, mass media and feminism.

Reviews

[Lit_Vibrations · Rating 4 out of 5]

As we all know bell hooks was a prolific, trailblazing author, feminist, social activist, cultural critic, and professor. She used her pen name to center attention on her ideas and to honor her courageous great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks.

With unflinching dedication to her work for the feminist and anti-racist movements. This collection of 7 interviews, stretches from early in her career until her last interview, we watch hooks discuss feminism, the complexity of rap music and masculinity, her relationship to Buddhism, the “politic of domination,” sexuality, and love and the importance of communication across cultural borders.

Whether she was sparking controversy on campuses or facing criticism from contemporaries, hooks relentlessly challenged herself and those around her, inserted herself into the tensions of the cultural moment, and anchored herself with love.

I’ve never personally read much of bell hooks work. I started All About Love awhile ago and never finished it. But I can tell from her interviews that her writing is not only personal and thought-provoking but she’s very honest. We experience the brilliance she’s presented in our community and now I see why so many people cling to her books and theories.

I don’t think the book does hooks justice with only a couple interviews compiled into a few pages. But I did enjoy Mikki Kendall’s introduction of the author and how she’s impacted her life and the life of other women.

Overall, this collection was decent again probably does no justice compared to her actual books but she does go into depth on why she mentioned certain things in them. I enjoyed her outspokenness and how unapologetic she was about her stance towards feminism and black women in general. Special thanks to @MelvilleHouse for my gifted copy!!!

Rating: 4/5⭐️

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read two of the books in bell hooks Love trilogy, I was interested to read these interviews, which give a little background to the author, including her affiliation and interest in Buddhist thought and addressing the controversy of having appeared on a live talk show, as a way for her to reach a different audience, a strategy that in one sense didn't work that well for her, due to the hard time she was given on the show, but perhaps despite this her aim was still achieved, as the silent majority who watched it from their homes, will have become more aware of who she was and the message she was trying to portray, in particular to Black women.

I have enjoyed her books and the interviews, even if I am not her preferred audience, because I believe it is necessary to read outside one's own race, culture, ethnic group, language to understand other perspectives and the issues that others face. Sometimes we find resonance, other times, we pay attention, listen, read and learn.

[Andre(Read-A-Lot) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always good to read the thoughts of the amazing prolific scholar that bell hooks is. She is sadly no longer with us, but books like these, along with her own copious publications will keep her revered in this world.

Only six interviews here and all are rather short, but taken together you can get a small sample size of her thinking. If you are seeking depth, unfortunately you will have to search elsewhere. The interviews don’t really give her the space to really expound on her theories. Just very light touches. So that is quite frustrating. Sometimes there is a good question, and your mind gets ready to hear some profound response, but it isn’t structured in a way that allows for that.

One of the big misses here was the absence of a chronological bibliography of bell hooks work. She published over thirty books and though many are mentioned in the text, would have been nice to have them all listed. A great big thank you to Melville books and Edelweiss for an advanced copy. Book drop, July 2023!

[Ryn Conley · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was fun reading a collection of interviews like this as an introduction to a writer’s work! I’ve been meaning to read books at some point for a long time—her influence on conversations and the trajectory of some of my friends’ lives is clear, and especially as a KY native author, I was curious to learn more about her beliefs and activism.
some notes from her expressions that I appreciated: her mention of the value of love as a concept in many forms of mysticism, how love is treated as an active commitment including love of all that is. this is so familiar after reading The Brothers Karamazov this year! The scene where Alyosha, who represents the ideal of active love within his understanding of loving and serving God, leaves the path of monasticism and weeps at the beauty of the world God created, loving it before seeking to find its purpose. idk if bell hooks meant this kind of love, but it’s what it made me think of. I also appreciated her teaching that love starts with knowing and the hard work of knowing another, sacrificing yourself in that hard work. also, her warning as to the possibility of corruptibility in giving agency to those in oppression is really wise in my understanding of what she’s saying here. she seems to have been aware at that point of the seed for selfish gain in each person, and to warn feminists around her against simply empowering women to take the power men hold in society and wield it against them as well as other women, which she observes as the unfortunate answer many have sought for the discrimination and oppression of women. she also adds to this a more holistic view of race than I expected, saying that any form of justice that just reinforces belief in the inferiority of another person is not justice for the one originally oppressed or the oppressor, but just a swap of the two’s positions. interesting overall!
as usual, reading authors who are seeking to make sense of the world and its deep suffering without the presence of Jesus as Lord, King, Savior, and Wisdom in sight always brings a weight to my heart—the questions she asks are so holistically and meaningfully met and engaged with by the character of the Lord, the truth of the gospel, and its implications. and yet, her arguments turn back onto the human wisdom and struggles to free us from those questions and injustices. I hope reading this quick book will help me in seeing bigger pictures of those around me, the systems I live within, and give me just a few more tools and thoughts to use in seeking to love others and know and meditate on truth over time, but I remember again by the contrast that building up an appetite is cruel to your own flesh if you don’t have what is truly good with which to nourish it in the end.

[Coral · Rating 5 out of 5]

Familiar with her name and legacy but never having read any of her 30+ books, I was excited to pick up this interview compilation and read bell hooks’ responses across the decades and on a range of topics. It was a quick and entertaining read!
hook’s wit, strength, exhaustion and passion seeking what could be better are all on display, I found myself excitedly reading portions of her responses aloud to my husband and texting quotes to friends.
I’ll be eager to read more of bell hooks work, may she rest in peace.

[Madeline Condor · Rating 4 out of 5]

- So insightful! So much more for me to learn from bell hooks, I can’t wait.

[Bookish Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my introduction to bell hooks, and I think it was perfect to get an idea of her style of thought to prepare me for reading her actual work.

[Em · Rating 5 out of 5]

bell hooks: The Last Interview provided me with a deep dive into her philosophies of womanism, the impact patriarchy has on the inner life of men, her relationship with Buddhism, and the overall politic of domination in our culture and her thoughts and feelings about it.

The introduction is written by Mikki Kendall who is the author of one of my all time favorite feminist texts: Hood Feminism as well as a scholar on the impact and legacy of women's history. I appreciated how her introduction provides a comprehensive background on bell hooks for the reader. Her introduction makes it so that someone with little to no familiarity with hooks at all can pick up this collection of interviews and start off reading with a foundation of understanding.

This collection contains 6 interviews spanning the spectrum from bell hooks early career to her final interview. This is a great reading recommendation for fans of bell hooks and novices alike. I enjoyed reading the words as they came directly from her mouth and learned so much about the framework hooks life and work was built upon.

Thank you to the author and publisher for the e-arc copy!

[Hazel P · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great glimpse of bell hooks’ body of thoughts. I particularly like her critique on Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk who’s often referenced in hooks’ works. But she doesn’t cover and raises concern that the monk’s thoughts on family, marriage and sex are conservative and conventional. When asked by interviewer if hooks would be interested in meeting the monk in person, hooks replied, “reading about his attachment to certain sexist thinking in a book is one thing, but actually experiencing it at a gathering would be another thing”.

And I was also amazed to find out she was influenced by “engaged Buddhism” 入世佛教 which is less about Buddhism for me but the concept of actively engaging rather than turning away from the world. A common theme in Chinese poems in old time.

And I also enjoy the interview on “how to practice intersectionalism” where hooks comments while we’re an amalgamation of multi factors, at a given point of time, there must be one foregrounded factor. Ie, class, ie, gender.

Last, like how hooks summarises her own work, what influences her most is the concrete circumstances of our daily lives. hooks always reminds us to live at present moment and to love.

[J Earl · Rating 5 out of 5]

bell hooks: The Last Interview is a volume in the Last Interviews series, and an excellent one it is. Glimpses of her thinking at various points throughout her life and career.

While there is enough contextualization if you're familiar with her work this isn't really an introduction. The better you know her work the better the interviews will speak to you. You also need to read with an active, rigorous mindset. Not because she is hard to understand but because she, like always, challenges you. And if you fail to grasp the bigger picture she is painting, you will make the freshman mistake of taking a sentence or comment out of context, like about Anita Hill or the Rodney King uprising.

hooks refused to allow her readers, or listeners if you were ever fortunate enough to watch her speak, take the easy way out or around people or situations that needed to have their problematic aspects analyzed, the examples in the previous paragraph being perfect examples. One can do a kneejerk dismissal and simply refuse to engage with the overlapping systems at work or take their unease at some comments and examine what hooks is actually getting at. Many take the easy way, which saves them looking closely at either their cultural heroes or themselves.

Having taught both her works and her ideas, I can see where using parts of this book would fit nicely with the specific works they reference. Rather than having to find copies of the interviews elsewhere, they are collected and ready to use. Between the primary readings and these interviews, classroom discussion should be energetic and productive.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[gaia ★ · Rating 2 out of 5]

5.5/10
This book is a series of interviews about various topics, from feminism to Buddhism, which I didn't particularly enjoy. I agree with a lot of what hooks says, and strongly disagree with the rest.
Something that I do want to point out is what she says about Anita Hill. She reprimands her for saying "Other people urged me to come forth" when talking about the sexual assault she experienced, because she is "presenting herself as a passive person". This struck me as the most disgusting thing hooks could've said. She thinks Hill is wrong in victimising herself, then praises the article of a man about victimage. Now, she's talked about dualism and how life isn't so simple - basically, nothing's just black or white, gray areas exist; just because a person is black doesn't mean she'll get along with them more than with a white person, etc. - but she seems to use this excuse to be critical of the women and praise the men. The whole time, I kept thinking about it and couldn't shake it off.
I won't talk at length about anything else because my personal opinion is clouding my judgement. This book may be interesting for people who want to read everything bell hooks has ever said, or who want to get to know her really quickly; but I personally think if you're ever going to read anything by her, Ain't I a Woman? is the more obvious choice.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the e-arc.

[Laura Hoffman Brauman · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance."

I am a huge fan of the Last Interview series. This series compiles excerpts of a series of interviews held over the course of the subject's life. In doing so, you get a sense of a scope of the subject's influence and impact. You can also get a sense of how their ideas and beliefs might have shifted or adjusted throughout their career. Mikki Kendall (another writer and thinker that I admire) did the introduction to this edition on bell hooks. I appreciated the way she both paid respect to hooks' contributions while also noting that there were times where hooks' ideas as articulated or perceived invited challenge. The concept that growing, teaching, and learning is about engaging with ideas and dialogue rather than just passively assimilating ideas is both touched on in the introduction and also comes through in several of the interviews selected for this book. If you are looking for a work that lets you dive deep into hooks' philosophies and beliefs, this is probably not it. If you want something that gives you an overview and a starting point along with a sense of hooks as an individual, then pick this up.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know of bell hooks but haven't read any of her books, which is my fault. Therefore, I'm not sure I'm the audience for this book (and perhaps the others in the 'Last Interview' series?). I felt as though there was context that I would have had if I had previously read her work. As it is, this gave a taste of her wide-ranging thought and warm spirit, but not a deep understanding of anything in particular. I haven't read other books in the series, so I don't know if there really is a true "last interview" in this or many of the others.

She touched on some very interesting ideas in these conversations - like the need for a feminist PR firm to try to give proper context for a news story instead of letting the mainstream media have their way with it - the example being Gloria Steinem's marriage. Needless to say, I have to go read more.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was okay, but didn't have what i love about bell hooks in it. If these interviews had been interspersed with essays, or even had some threads of additional writing by another person connecting them, they could have been a lot more powerful. But as it was, it felt like everything just really skimmed the surface and i didn't even understand why these 6 interviews, in particular, were chosen out of everything. What i love about bell hook is how she can make these profound connections and explain relationships and systems of domination and it felt like a third of this book was just basic interview questions and answers and the rest was scattered. That said--it's still bell hooks, so there were definitely still gems that i really valued.

[Raven T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so eye-opening and thought provoking. I enjoyed the interview format. It made it easier to follow and hear directly from bell her response to each question. I could almost hear the interviews as I read. They kept me intrigued by challenging the way I've view my ego and my place in the different minority groups I belong to. People need this book to help them critically think about how they view topics such as class, racism, sexism, love, and intersectionality. She explores these themes in various ways such as through hip hop lyrics, life in Kentucky, and more. I think the author did a great job with choosing meaningful interviews building up to the last one. Now, I'm looking forward to checking The Last Interview series for the other important figures they've covered.

[AnnieM · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am familiar with some of bell hook's work but not all. The interviews contained in this book gave me more insight into the thoughts behind some of her work. But overall the construct of this book (and apparently it is a part of a series) did not work so well for me. It is basically a re-publishing of 7 different interviews with her from different media and so there is repetition and not enough substance here for my liking. Technically one of them was indeed her last interview. I was pleased to learn a bit more about her but now am inspired to read more of her work.

Thank you to Netgalley and Melville House Publishing for an ARC and I left this review voluntarily.

[Rhonda Hankins]

This short book served as my introduction to bell hooks. I'm interested to read a book or two of hers now; she has a lot of interesting observations that I'd like to learn more about. These interviews are short and on different topics so you get some impressions of her thinking and I'd like to understand some of her ideas better.

One snippet that stood out as particularly appropriate for a Goodreads crowd: ". . . reading is the absolute core pleasure of my life"

& so I'll take a look at her recommended reads and try some as well:

https://radicalreads.com/bell-hooks-f...

[LaShanda Chamberlain · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say, it's the amazing bell hooks!!! This collection of interviews with bell hooks is a pure gem. These interviews represent hooks' evolution over the years. Even in her early days, she exhibited a brilliant mind & present her theories in a methodical manner.

If you're a bell hooks' fan, you will enjoy this one.

Thanks NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Kameryn Sanchez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think too much about how theorist and authors grew and came into their perspectives. In this book I got a chance to reflect on how bell hooks evolved over time. It's a great reminder that her specialness was in how she examined what was mundane and didn't stick with an opinion unless it stood up to her own scrutiny and evaluations. A great thinker of our time.

[daniel dillon · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's terrible that we have this book. We only have it because we no longer have bell hooks. But in the spirit of so much of her work, this tidy little book does an excellent job of getting her idea out there, broadly, accessibly, so that they will live on.

[Matt Sautman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though short in comparison to some of the other extant Last Interview volumes, being able to see bell hooks discuss and react to her work in conversation with other people provides insight into her personal life that most of her books avoid covering, personalizing her bibliography even further.

[Katie Nash]

My first introduction to bell hooks and it was amazing! I really resonate with a lot of her commentary and really appreciate reading interviews about her writings and ideas before diving into her works. I am especially excited to read "all about love" and "the will to change"!

[Mike Thomas]

was not expecting to read bell hooks compare black rebellions/rodney king riots to united states military invading iraq

[Kathy Iwanicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to @netgalley for the eARC. This is one of those books that I really wish I had a hard copy of. There is so much! I need time to process and think about each interview.

[Avery Spratt · Rating 4 out of 5]

love bell

[aman grewal · Rating 4 out of 5]

so profound

[claire shu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This changed the way that i frame social justice, approaching with love and understanding not accusation. I love everything about the book and I will be recommending it to everyone I know!

[Meleah]

I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to reading others in this series.

[Danielle Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love her writing so much! And that last chapter was perfection