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Pertencimento: Uma cultura do lugar
Mirando as belas colinas do Kentucky, onde passou momentos felizes na infância, bell hooks constrói nos ensaios deste livro um itinerário da memória ao mesmo tempo que vislumbra um futuro de reconexão com a terra e com os valores transmitidos por seus ancestrais, articulando anseios pessoais a questões ambientais, de sustentabilidade e de justiça social. Naturalmente, seria impossível abordar tais temas sem considerar as políticas de raça, gênero e classe, além da violência psíquica e concreta da supremacia branca. A autora reivindica o legado dos agricultores negros do passado e do presente, que celebram a produção local de alimentos, e das artesãs de colchas de retalhos, como sua avó materna, que transmitem de geração a geração essa e outras práticas repletas de significado. Com coragem, perspicácia e honestidade, Pertencimento oferece a extraordinária visão de um mundo onde todas as pessoas — independentemente de qual lugar chamam de lar — possam ter uma vida plena e satisfatória, onde todos tenham a sensação de pertencer.
***
hooks captura nossa atenção por meio de análises intimistas, honestas e, ao mesmo tempo, extremamente amplas e críticas com relação à nossa vida e ao nosso lugar no mundo. Aqui, a autora resgata a si mesma — e, sobretudo, se abre à compreensão do que significa pertencer, de quanto o racismo e o sexismo estão na raiz de sentimentos de não pertencimento e de quanto a perspectiva ancestral, intimamente relacionada a conexões com a terra, com o meio ambiente e com estéticas opositoras, nos permite a identificação e, portanto, se constitui num caminho de cuidado e cura.
— Halina Leal, no Prefácio à edição brasileira
***
Pertencimento: uma cultura do lugar registra meus pensamentos sobre questões de lugar e pertencimento. Misturando passado e presente, este livro traça uma jornada em círculos, na qual dou voltas de um lugar a outro até terminar onde comecei: meu velho Kentucky. Para mim, a repetição é assustadora. Ela parece sugerir uma estática eterna. Lembra-me dos dias quentes de verão da infância, que passavam muito devagar, nos quais os mesmos padrões de rotina se repetiam sempre. Existe muita repetição neste trabalho. Ele abrange toda a minha vida. E isso me faz lembrar de como os meus antepassados contavam as mesmas histórias diversas vezes. Ouvir a mesma história faz com que nunca nos esqueçamos dela. Então conto a minha história aqui seguidamente. Fatos e ideias se repetem, porque cada ensaio foi escrito de maneira isolada — em momentos distintos.
— bell hooks, na Introdução
***
hooks captura nossa atenção por meio de análises intimistas, honestas e, ao mesmo tempo, extremamente amplas e críticas com relação à nossa vida e ao nosso lugar no mundo. Aqui, a autora resgata a si mesma — e, sobretudo, se abre à compreensão do que significa pertencer, de quanto o racismo e o sexismo estão na raiz de sentimentos de não pertencimento e de quanto a perspectiva ancestral, intimamente relacionada a conexões com a terra, com o meio ambiente e com estéticas opositoras, nos permite a identificação e, portanto, se constitui num caminho de cuidado e cura.
— Halina Leal, no Prefácio à edição brasileira
***
Pertencimento: uma cultura do lugar registra meus pensamentos sobre questões de lugar e pertencimento. Misturando passado e presente, este livro traça uma jornada em círculos, na qual dou voltas de um lugar a outro até terminar onde comecei: meu velho Kentucky. Para mim, a repetição é assustadora. Ela parece sugerir uma estática eterna. Lembra-me dos dias quentes de verão da infância, que passavam muito devagar, nos quais os mesmos padrões de rotina se repetiam sempre. Existe muita repetição neste trabalho. Ele abrange toda a minha vida. E isso me faz lembrar de como os meus antepassados contavam as mesmas histórias diversas vezes. Ouvir a mesma história faz com que nunca nos esqueçamos dela. Então conto a minha história aqui seguidamente. Fatos e ideias se repetem, porque cada ensaio foi escrito de maneira isolada — em momentos distintos.
— bell hooks, na Introdução
284 pages, Paperback
First published October 24, 2004
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About the author
bell hooks
162 books14.2k followersbell 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.
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March 29, 2019
Last week I was looking for books on belonging, and came across this one by bell hooks. I’m very fond of bell hooks, I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by her and have also learnt a lot from her over the years. This book isn’t what I was expecting, though. If you aren’t familiar with her work I guess it could be summed up as her response to the white supremacist, capitalist, imperialist, patriarchy – which she sets about showing how to expose its underlying assumptions so as to eventually overthrow its grip upon us all. As such, I think she is pretty close to required reading. She also has the advantage of writing beautifully, something, like being pretty or rich, that you should probably try to do if you possibly can. She draws connections between things that are rarely obvious until she does, and then you wonder why you never saw that yourself before.
In some ways this book explains why she moved back to Kentucky. She explains that her readers often note that she is from the South – but that she never really thinks of herself as being from the South, but rather of being from Kentucky – and that her quirks are less those of the South and more those of Kentucky. She is a mountain girl, a country girl, but also someone that has been trained to be ‘universal’ as part of the academy. In her 50s, she decided to move back ‘home’ – back to somewhere where she belonged. This notion of belonging, of having a place and of feeling that you are allowed to be yourself there, pervades this book and I guess that is one of the things I found unexpected here.
And that is true for lots and lots of reasons – not least because too often books by working class or ethnic minority people who have left home, and have make a name for themselves in academia talk about how they no longer feel they belong anywhere. That is, they don’t feel that they fully belong in the world they have been trained into, and yet, try as they might, they can never really return to the world they left either. This is much more reminiscent of my own experience, and so, is something I notice when it is mentioned. I’ve rarely read about this opposite experience – and so that alone made this book worth reading.
I have a very strong sense that once you leave a place it is very hard to go back – not merely because what you are returning to is likely to have become a kind of dream – but also because the world, even the world in Kentucky, moves on either with or without you. There is a lovely book on this (academic, but still) about a guy in Australia having this experience called The Locals. Foucault talks somewhere of memory being a site of resistance, but for many migrants I’ve known (and as a migrant I get to speak with some authority on this) memory is also a site of deep, deep conservatism.
The thing is that bell hooks turns this idea on its head. And many others I’ve taken for granted too. For instance, I’ve always known that country people are likely to be very religious as a consequence of them being utterly dependent upon the capricious forces of nature. I’ve generally seen this as a bad thing – but hooks makes it clear that for Black Americans, a people she stresses have generally lived and worked on the land, the capricious nature of farming allowed them a psychological escape from racism. You see, racism asserts that white people are somehow all-powerful, but the black farmer knows that the white over-seer can’t make the sun shine or the rain fall. The limits of white power are made all too clear in an agrarian culture. But in the cities, the limits of white power are completely hidden and all-consuming as well.
She sees returning to the land as a kind of healing in all senses – not least for the land as well. Her discussion of the form of coal mining that involves removing the tops of mountains really is something that, if we still had souls, would make us barely containable in our rage. I’m not a particularly spiritual person, but this level of disrespect towards the earth is quite breathtaking. We will, of course, eventually pay in kind and with interest.
Her discussion of how black people view white people – mostly as an infinite threat – ought to be required reading by every white person. Her discussion of black trauma and the need for psychological healing is also a key driving force behind her discussion of the need to both find a place to belong and a place of community.
I also found her discussion of how our metaphors of white and black – and the privileging of light over dark even in our metaphors – was particularly interesting. As she says at one point, sometimes this really ought to be inverted, as we are safer in the dark than in the full glare of the light. There is a beautiful dialectical dance that goes on in her writing sometimes that I find quite exquisite. Her chapter on her grandmother’s quilts was another example of this, this connection to the materiality of being as a condition of the spirituality of being too – which, when you think of it, is perhaps the whole point of a sense of ‘belonging’.
While I’m deeply attracted to the notion of building communities and while I also think that it is about the only hope we humans have if we are to have any sort of future at all – I’m not sure ‘returning to the land’ is likely to be an answer for very many people. This solution is more likely to be only available to people with a certain level of privilege. The proportion of people living in cities is increasing so that now the majority of us do – and it isn’t clear how shifting back to the land would be even possible for most of us. And as much as I love the idea of people returning to land to nurture and protect it – personally, I have no such desire, in fact, I can think of nothing I would like less. And not least because I simply have never ‘belonged’ in such an environment. Oddly enough, hooks says she doesn’t have a ‘green thumb’ either and says this a couple of times – which made me think about what it was that made her feel she belonged there. The answer seems to be more associated with community and culture than necessarily ‘the land’ – or perhaps not the land as a site of work, but of a site of admiration – of a kind of ‘grounding’. Which is complicated, since she clearly sees the redemptive power of the land as coming from people working it as well.
I couldn’t help thinking throughout this that I really have never felt like I ‘belong’ – which is odd, since I read another book on the topic last week and that wasn’t at all something I thought about while reading that book. I think it was in her explaining her sense of being at home, and literally what that meant to her that made it clear that that wasn’t really something I’ve ever felt. And then I thought how easy it would be to exaggerate that feeling. I certainly don’t feel the opposite – of being ostracised and estranged, although, like everyone, I guess I have at times. I fully understand how debilitating that can feel and that isn’t the experience I’m talking about.
Now, true story. When I decided to go back to university, I was going to go to the university closest to where I was living at the time – which also happened to be the university that both of my daughters were attending. When I mentioned this to one of them she said that would be fine, but that she wouldn’t be able to have lunch with me every day. The utter absurdity of her having to go to university with her dad was a large part of the reason I ended up at another university – one of the most prestigious universities in Australia. And the whole time I was there, and this is literally true, I would frequently get a couple of lines from Radiohead’s Creep popping into my head: ‘what the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here’. Which more or less stopped immediately after I came to my current university.
I think that learning where you might belong is a very useful thing to achieve – if you can, you should. I think, as hooks says somewhere here (well, effectively) it is worth more than gold or fame. I couldn’t make the choices she has made, but I wouldn’t belong in that world either, which is perhaps her point.
In some ways this book explains why she moved back to Kentucky. She explains that her readers often note that she is from the South – but that she never really thinks of herself as being from the South, but rather of being from Kentucky – and that her quirks are less those of the South and more those of Kentucky. She is a mountain girl, a country girl, but also someone that has been trained to be ‘universal’ as part of the academy. In her 50s, she decided to move back ‘home’ – back to somewhere where she belonged. This notion of belonging, of having a place and of feeling that you are allowed to be yourself there, pervades this book and I guess that is one of the things I found unexpected here.
And that is true for lots and lots of reasons – not least because too often books by working class or ethnic minority people who have left home, and have make a name for themselves in academia talk about how they no longer feel they belong anywhere. That is, they don’t feel that they fully belong in the world they have been trained into, and yet, try as they might, they can never really return to the world they left either. This is much more reminiscent of my own experience, and so, is something I notice when it is mentioned. I’ve rarely read about this opposite experience – and so that alone made this book worth reading.
I have a very strong sense that once you leave a place it is very hard to go back – not merely because what you are returning to is likely to have become a kind of dream – but also because the world, even the world in Kentucky, moves on either with or without you. There is a lovely book on this (academic, but still) about a guy in Australia having this experience called The Locals. Foucault talks somewhere of memory being a site of resistance, but for many migrants I’ve known (and as a migrant I get to speak with some authority on this) memory is also a site of deep, deep conservatism.
The thing is that bell hooks turns this idea on its head. And many others I’ve taken for granted too. For instance, I’ve always known that country people are likely to be very religious as a consequence of them being utterly dependent upon the capricious forces of nature. I’ve generally seen this as a bad thing – but hooks makes it clear that for Black Americans, a people she stresses have generally lived and worked on the land, the capricious nature of farming allowed them a psychological escape from racism. You see, racism asserts that white people are somehow all-powerful, but the black farmer knows that the white over-seer can’t make the sun shine or the rain fall. The limits of white power are made all too clear in an agrarian culture. But in the cities, the limits of white power are completely hidden and all-consuming as well.
She sees returning to the land as a kind of healing in all senses – not least for the land as well. Her discussion of the form of coal mining that involves removing the tops of mountains really is something that, if we still had souls, would make us barely containable in our rage. I’m not a particularly spiritual person, but this level of disrespect towards the earth is quite breathtaking. We will, of course, eventually pay in kind and with interest.
Her discussion of how black people view white people – mostly as an infinite threat – ought to be required reading by every white person. Her discussion of black trauma and the need for psychological healing is also a key driving force behind her discussion of the need to both find a place to belong and a place of community.
I also found her discussion of how our metaphors of white and black – and the privileging of light over dark even in our metaphors – was particularly interesting. As she says at one point, sometimes this really ought to be inverted, as we are safer in the dark than in the full glare of the light. There is a beautiful dialectical dance that goes on in her writing sometimes that I find quite exquisite. Her chapter on her grandmother’s quilts was another example of this, this connection to the materiality of being as a condition of the spirituality of being too – which, when you think of it, is perhaps the whole point of a sense of ‘belonging’.
While I’m deeply attracted to the notion of building communities and while I also think that it is about the only hope we humans have if we are to have any sort of future at all – I’m not sure ‘returning to the land’ is likely to be an answer for very many people. This solution is more likely to be only available to people with a certain level of privilege. The proportion of people living in cities is increasing so that now the majority of us do – and it isn’t clear how shifting back to the land would be even possible for most of us. And as much as I love the idea of people returning to land to nurture and protect it – personally, I have no such desire, in fact, I can think of nothing I would like less. And not least because I simply have never ‘belonged’ in such an environment. Oddly enough, hooks says she doesn’t have a ‘green thumb’ either and says this a couple of times – which made me think about what it was that made her feel she belonged there. The answer seems to be more associated with community and culture than necessarily ‘the land’ – or perhaps not the land as a site of work, but of a site of admiration – of a kind of ‘grounding’. Which is complicated, since she clearly sees the redemptive power of the land as coming from people working it as well.
I couldn’t help thinking throughout this that I really have never felt like I ‘belong’ – which is odd, since I read another book on the topic last week and that wasn’t at all something I thought about while reading that book. I think it was in her explaining her sense of being at home, and literally what that meant to her that made it clear that that wasn’t really something I’ve ever felt. And then I thought how easy it would be to exaggerate that feeling. I certainly don’t feel the opposite – of being ostracised and estranged, although, like everyone, I guess I have at times. I fully understand how debilitating that can feel and that isn’t the experience I’m talking about.
Now, true story. When I decided to go back to university, I was going to go to the university closest to where I was living at the time – which also happened to be the university that both of my daughters were attending. When I mentioned this to one of them she said that would be fine, but that she wouldn’t be able to have lunch with me every day. The utter absurdity of her having to go to university with her dad was a large part of the reason I ended up at another university – one of the most prestigious universities in Australia. And the whole time I was there, and this is literally true, I would frequently get a couple of lines from Radiohead’s Creep popping into my head: ‘what the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here’. Which more or less stopped immediately after I came to my current university.
I think that learning where you might belong is a very useful thing to achieve – if you can, you should. I think, as hooks says somewhere here (well, effectively) it is worth more than gold or fame. I couldn’t make the choices she has made, but I wouldn’t belong in that world either, which is perhaps her point.
February 26, 2022
How deep is our connection to the places where we grew up? The author, bell hooks, examines this question by reflecting on her choice to leave her home state of Kentucky as a university student and her return to Kentucky later in life. Her story provides a lot of food for thought. There are four chapters that were of particular interest to me.
Chapter two, is the most direct in answering the question above. While people may feel a need to leave their hometowns due to a difference in worldview or due to the limited opportunities there, hooks points out that living somewhere else may actually make people feel closer to their hometowns. In her case, she didn't really understand the culture of Kentucky and what it meant to be a Kentuckian until she had moved to California for university. In other words, living in a different place gives people a different perspective that makes it easier to see what is distinct about their own culture, which in turn makes it easier to appreciate it despite all of its shortcomings. That tension of being repelled by a hometown but also drawn back to it is something I can relate to.
I also really enjoyed chapters fourteen and fifteen, which were about quilt making. I don't think I have ever thought about quilt making before, but hooks makes a very interesting case for folk art in these chapters and discusses how this art is ignored or undervalued in society. I always appreciate it when a book makes me interested in something new.
Finally, I enjoyed the interview that bell hooks conducts with Wendell Berry in chapter eighteen. They have a very frank and honest discussion about race in Kentucky. This kind of frank discussion on race is something that I think America needs more of.
There is one more thing that was eye opening for me. This book paints a much more positive image of Appalachia than usually appears in media. The media is often quick to point out how poor this area is, but hooks is able to point out how rich they are in things other than material wealth. Having this alternative perspective on Appalachia is valuable.
To the end the review, there is one point to keep in mind. This book doesn't really read well as a book. If you read it straight through, there is quite a lot of repetition in the chapters. It is better to approach this as a collection of overlapping essays. Pick out the chapters that look interesting to you and read those, or read it over a longer period of time little by little. That will help you get past the repetitive parts of the book.
Chapter two, is the most direct in answering the question above. While people may feel a need to leave their hometowns due to a difference in worldview or due to the limited opportunities there, hooks points out that living somewhere else may actually make people feel closer to their hometowns. In her case, she didn't really understand the culture of Kentucky and what it meant to be a Kentuckian until she had moved to California for university. In other words, living in a different place gives people a different perspective that makes it easier to see what is distinct about their own culture, which in turn makes it easier to appreciate it despite all of its shortcomings. That tension of being repelled by a hometown but also drawn back to it is something I can relate to.
I also really enjoyed chapters fourteen and fifteen, which were about quilt making. I don't think I have ever thought about quilt making before, but hooks makes a very interesting case for folk art in these chapters and discusses how this art is ignored or undervalued in society. I always appreciate it when a book makes me interested in something new.
Finally, I enjoyed the interview that bell hooks conducts with Wendell Berry in chapter eighteen. They have a very frank and honest discussion about race in Kentucky. This kind of frank discussion on race is something that I think America needs more of.
There is one more thing that was eye opening for me. This book paints a much more positive image of Appalachia than usually appears in media. The media is often quick to point out how poor this area is, but hooks is able to point out how rich they are in things other than material wealth. Having this alternative perspective on Appalachia is valuable.
To the end the review, there is one point to keep in mind. This book doesn't really read well as a book. If you read it straight through, there is quite a lot of repetition in the chapters. It is better to approach this as a collection of overlapping essays. Pick out the chapters that look interesting to you and read those, or read it over a longer period of time little by little. That will help you get past the repetitive parts of the book.
August 20, 2013
So poorly edited it's a bit hard to read. Repetitive (even for a collection of essays from different contexts) and blatant grammar mistakes make it hard to pick up intended meaning. Sometimes seems like she wanted to find a way to relay meaningful quotes from books she has been reading. There are some fascinating sections on quilting, porches, and tobacco. Also, it's a Wendell Berry lovefest so that was fun.
I enjoyed being pushed to consider more deeply why I choose not to return home (to Kentucky), though her articulation of her own reasoning felt a little preachy. I'm not quite sure what people who cannot go home are supposed to do about their relationship to place...
Though I suspect hooks is actually saying something else. Instead, I think she is encouraging that we re-adopt agrarian values to satiate our need to feel connected. I think she is promoting nostalgia as a way to build nourish our souls.
"When we create beloved community, environments that are anti-racist and inclusive, it need not matter whether those spaces are diverse. What matters is that should difference enter the world of beloved community it can find a place of welcome, a place to belong." (183)
I enjoyed being pushed to consider more deeply why I choose not to return home (to Kentucky), though her articulation of her own reasoning felt a little preachy. I'm not quite sure what people who cannot go home are supposed to do about their relationship to place...
Though I suspect hooks is actually saying something else. Instead, I think she is encouraging that we re-adopt agrarian values to satiate our need to feel connected. I think she is promoting nostalgia as a way to build nourish our souls.
"When we create beloved community, environments that are anti-racist and inclusive, it need not matter whether those spaces are diverse. What matters is that should difference enter the world of beloved community it can find a place of welcome, a place to belong." (183)
August 17, 2025
Not what I expected. But a well written book.
February 11, 2013
This is a collection of essays all on different topics but a few of them did touch upon topics that had already been discussed. Still, I found it to be a very interesting read, especially how bell hooks tied in racial and class issues and ideas to environmentalism and how she stressed that we're losing touch with nature and the disastrous results that could result. I enjoyed reading about her growing up in Kentucky. Very nostalgic book.
January 5, 2021
Repetitive in parts - but beautiful reflections on what it means to be home.
Her conversations with Wendell Berry are a gem.
Her conversations with Wendell Berry are a gem.
December 14, 2021
this was an interesting, sometimes odd, collection of essays. I enjoyed the essays “Representations of whiteness in the Black Imagination,” “Touching the Earth” and “To be Whole and Holy.” The interview with Wendell Barry, and hooks’ choice to frequently cite this white author’s work on Black agrarian life, was extremely strange to me — and sometimes it seemed like it was strange to him, too, (eg he said a few times “A writer who really understands this subject is the African American writer Ernest Gaines”). That whole dialogue was wild to me, actually, for so many reasons — but most specifically Barry’s use of the n word at one point, and when hooks asks whether he thinks slavery has ended or taken on new forms, he says, “Well, I think it has taken on new forms. A lot of white people are thinking of themselves as slaves, and some of them are ‘successful’ people. You have a whole society that is saying ‘Thank God. It’s Friday.’” Just, what?? also, I’m not usually a stickler on grammar, but as other reviewers wrote, this collection sorely needed an editor, and the errors (or random periods mid sentence) were very distracting.
July 5, 2023
4.5/5
personal & political, bell hooks investigates what it means to spiritually belong to a geographical place, to heal with land, to return to our native place. I love the questions and sentiments she explores in this collection of essays. hooks' words as always are a source of nourishment and insight - they nudge you towards better understanding your place in the world.
would recommend to everyone!
personal & political, bell hooks investigates what it means to spiritually belong to a geographical place, to heal with land, to return to our native place. I love the questions and sentiments she explores in this collection of essays. hooks' words as always are a source of nourishment and insight - they nudge you towards better understanding your place in the world.
would recommend to everyone!
April 23, 2024
Meditations on belonging, trauma, and place, but also a love letter to Appalachia. I enjoyed most of these essays, and I love bell hooks' pastoral writing about her home and childhood.
November 27, 2009
I'll admit I wasn't able to finish this. There's parts that are really powerful, like when she talks about the importance of reclaiming Black people's connection to the land, to farming, and the ways her grandparents and childhood community in the hills of Kentucky had of relating to the world with honesty and respect that was entirely foreign to most people she came in contact with after going to college in California. (I'm not doing this part of the book justice, but it gives you some idea.)
There is a *lot* of repetition, which gets annoying about 5 essays in when you start hoping for something new and she keeps covering the same territory. She's open about this in her intro, that the book is a collection of essays from across her life, reflecting on Kentucky, home, exile and returning as a working class progressive/leftist Black woman to live in Berea, close to her childhood home, where she has found the closest thing to beloved community that she's found anywhere. So these essays weren't written as a book, but have been gathered together. As such, I still think the book would have benefitted from stronger editing, and *copy*editing -- the number of typos actually impedes reading after a certain point, unfortunately.
There is a *lot* of repetition, which gets annoying about 5 essays in when you start hoping for something new and she keeps covering the same territory. She's open about this in her intro, that the book is a collection of essays from across her life, reflecting on Kentucky, home, exile and returning as a working class progressive/leftist Black woman to live in Berea, close to her childhood home, where she has found the closest thing to beloved community that she's found anywhere. So these essays weren't written as a book, but have been gathered together. As such, I still think the book would have benefitted from stronger editing, and *copy*editing -- the number of typos actually impedes reading after a certain point, unfortunately.
September 9, 2017
Bell Hooks is the most amazing writer. It took me so long to read this book because her words are like the richest Devils Food Cake ever - so rich and filling that you can only take a bit at a time before it is too much to take. I needed time to digest and think about her words before moving on to the next bit. This book is a series of essays about Belonging and place and what it means. It's about returning to your roots (as she did) and finding your place there. It's about (of course) racism and the impact white privilege has in ways I hadn't even considered - but now am enlightened - and the benefits past culture had over our consumerist throw-away society which is killing our planet and humankind. It is, like all of the books of hers I have read, life changing, as you come away from it with a slightly different perspective of the world. That for me is a truly great book.
Read
May 30, 2018a gorgeous collection and necessary intervention where spirtuality, place, race, class, and community intersperse in brilliant dialogue. love her work with wendell barry and her way of animating theory into interpersonal relationships.
*BUT* oh my GOSH @Routledge books EDIT YOUR WORK! it is a privilege to publish one of the preeminent thinkers of the past century and it is disrespectful to her work to release this collection with such lazy editing and frequent editorial oversight. don't get how you can gain clout as an academic publisher if you aren't even doing standard copyediting.
*BUT* oh my GOSH @Routledge books EDIT YOUR WORK! it is a privilege to publish one of the preeminent thinkers of the past century and it is disrespectful to her work to release this collection with such lazy editing and frequent editorial oversight. don't get how you can gain clout as an academic publisher if you aren't even doing standard copyediting.
March 6, 2022
Beberapa waktu lalu, aku kembali ke Jogja, tempat yang kuanggap pula sebagai rumah selain Bali, tanah kelahiranku. Sepulang dari sana, aku merasa sangat sedih; aku ingin kembali bermukim di sana, merasakan suasana yang tidak kutemui di Bali, bersua dan berinteraksi dengan kawan-kawan yang darinya bisa kupelajari banyak hal. Berada di Jogja juga dapat membantuku melihat Bali dengan lebih kritis. Singkatnya, aku kembali seperti diriku di bulan September 2019, diriku yang merasa bahwa tempat yang tepat buatku adalah Jogja (walaupun tidak sedepresif dulu karena hey, sekarang aku harus tetap fokus bekerja!).
Sampai kemudian aku melanjutkan pembacaanku yang sempat tertunda beberapa waktu atas buku ini. Premis utama bukunya sangatlah sederhana, berangkat dari pertanyaan "What does it mean to call a place home?" Pertanyaan yang ternyata perlu refleksi yang dalam sambil melihat ke sekeliling.
Aku suka bagaimana hooks menceritakan hubungannya dengan Kentucky, tanah kelahirannya, dengan cara yang menyenangkan, tidak terkesan menggurui; ia cuma berbagi pengalaman. Ia pergi jauh ke sana ke mari, sampai akhirnya menyadari bahwa kampung halamannya adalah tempat tepat buatnya. Tempat yang membentuk kesejarahannya sebagai seorang perempuan, tempat ia mengalami hal-hal yang menyakitkan tetapi juga mengajarinya sesuatu, tempat ia mengakar.
Aku senang bagaimana hooks menjelaskan belonging culture tidak hanya bersinggungan pada lokasi geografis dan orang-orang di dalamnya. Ia juga berkaitan dengan budaya dan aspek ekologis. Bahwa hubungan kita dengan alam, dengan tanah, adalah hubungan yang vital pula antara kita dengan the divine. Bahwa kembali ke kampung bukan hanya urusan memindahkan diri ke tempat kita dilahirkan, tetapi juga mempelajari kembali koneksi-koneksi yang ada tapi tak disadari, juga yang terputus.
Dan lagi-lagi, aku menemukan "joy" dalam bukunya. "Creating joy in the midst of adversity was an essential survival strategy."
Menutup buku ini, aku menyadari bahwa aku memang harus sejalan dengan kata hatiku ketika aku memutuskan kembali ke Bali selepas kuliah. Aku harus berada di sini, menambatkan akarku, sambil terus mempelajari sekeliling dan mengaitkan sulur-sulurku pada apa-apa yang sempat terputus.
Sampai kemudian aku melanjutkan pembacaanku yang sempat tertunda beberapa waktu atas buku ini. Premis utama bukunya sangatlah sederhana, berangkat dari pertanyaan "What does it mean to call a place home?" Pertanyaan yang ternyata perlu refleksi yang dalam sambil melihat ke sekeliling.
Aku suka bagaimana hooks menceritakan hubungannya dengan Kentucky, tanah kelahirannya, dengan cara yang menyenangkan, tidak terkesan menggurui; ia cuma berbagi pengalaman. Ia pergi jauh ke sana ke mari, sampai akhirnya menyadari bahwa kampung halamannya adalah tempat tepat buatnya. Tempat yang membentuk kesejarahannya sebagai seorang perempuan, tempat ia mengalami hal-hal yang menyakitkan tetapi juga mengajarinya sesuatu, tempat ia mengakar.
Aku senang bagaimana hooks menjelaskan belonging culture tidak hanya bersinggungan pada lokasi geografis dan orang-orang di dalamnya. Ia juga berkaitan dengan budaya dan aspek ekologis. Bahwa hubungan kita dengan alam, dengan tanah, adalah hubungan yang vital pula antara kita dengan the divine. Bahwa kembali ke kampung bukan hanya urusan memindahkan diri ke tempat kita dilahirkan, tetapi juga mempelajari kembali koneksi-koneksi yang ada tapi tak disadari, juga yang terputus.
Dan lagi-lagi, aku menemukan "joy" dalam bukunya. "Creating joy in the midst of adversity was an essential survival strategy."
Menutup buku ini, aku menyadari bahwa aku memang harus sejalan dengan kata hatiku ketika aku memutuskan kembali ke Bali selepas kuliah. Aku harus berada di sini, menambatkan akarku, sambil terus mempelajari sekeliling dan mengaitkan sulur-sulurku pada apa-apa yang sempat terputus.
December 14, 2025
One of the best books I’ve read on the topic of belonging. bell hooks beautifully weaves the fabric of the absence of a culture of belonging and its intersectionality with racism, sexism and our relationship to nature. With a solid framework that can be extended to any dominator-victim dynamic.
Focusing on the care and commitment dimensions of love, she then brings us back to a sense of collective belonging just as she journeys back to her own source and culture of belonging.
One of my favourite passages:
The culture of belonging was no longer common in black sub-cultures. This giving over was a direct consequence of efforts to succeed in dominator culture and one could be successful there only if one imitated the behavior of those in power. Oftentimes black people who could not conform saw no alternative and sought escape in addiction. The focus on white power overshadowed ancestral understanding that we were all more than "race" and that there were powers mightier than humans.
The absence of this oppositional awareness led to a widespread feeling of vulnerability wherein many black people began to think of themselves solely as victims.
Focusing on the care and commitment dimensions of love, she then brings us back to a sense of collective belonging just as she journeys back to her own source and culture of belonging.
One of my favourite passages:
The culture of belonging was no longer common in black sub-cultures. This giving over was a direct consequence of efforts to succeed in dominator culture and one could be successful there only if one imitated the behavior of those in power. Oftentimes black people who could not conform saw no alternative and sought escape in addiction. The focus on white power overshadowed ancestral understanding that we were all more than "race" and that there were powers mightier than humans.
The absence of this oppositional awareness led to a widespread feeling of vulnerability wherein many black people began to think of themselves solely as victims.
July 1, 2023
I don’t have the brain width to write any sort of review that will do this justice. I have read three other books by hooks, but this one was the most autobiographical; I definitely feel I know hooks in a different way after reading this collection of essays. I really appreciated the multi layered approach to the concept of belonging in this collection. Personal stories of hooks’ childhood and family; historical impacts of the white supremacy/ capitalist/ Christian dominator culture on Black Americans, their right to belong, and their sense of belonging over time within that culture. As well as the aesthetic of belonging, and how levels of belonging influence the aesthetic and the creative aspects of life; links to literature and historic Black leaders who have spoken on aspects of belonging, and even an examination on ways contemporary understandings of identity and belonging may actually be counterproductive. So much wonderful knowledge and so many challenging questions.
I believe everyone should read everything by hooks. I certainly plan to ❤️
I believe everyone should read everything by hooks. I certainly plan to ❤️
August 4, 2009
I found bell hooks personal reflections on her journey home totally fascinating and enlightening. She writes about the tensions and personal discoveries she had to work through to finally return to the hills of Kentucky, the place that she ultimately reclaimed as home. I especially enjoyed the sections on the forgotten history of rural black farmers. Many chapters are a call to remember this part of black American history and a return to the importance of the land for non-whites and especially African-Americans. A very enlightening read.
April 25, 2021
I loved this book. It is a WILD ride -- who knew that Wendell Berry was a critical interrogator of whiteness or that agrarian life is so fundamental to racial justice -- but there is something for everyone here.
January 14, 2024
In Belonging; A Culture of Place, bell hooks shares her journey towards healing, her search for belonging, and, ultimately, her return home.
Throughout her young adult life, hooks never envisioned returning to her backwoods Kentucky home, which she described as a place of family dysfunction and racial oppression.
But in academic and urban settings, she felt pressure to hide her southern roots while facing more indirect forms of racism, inhibiting her ability to find authentic community. Neither in her travels or varied residences could hooks find the same values and close-knit community of her Kentucky home.
In her book, hooks frequently references the narcissistic colonizing worldview of the dominant white culture, which caused me to wonder how this mindset influenced my interpretation of "place." Historically, white people have failed to consider a place’s purpose, community, personality, or culture before dramatically entering and imposing ourselves. Before I enter a place, do I contemplate its purpose, its people, its history and how my presence might
impact the community (negatively or positively)? Or am I only assessing what it has to offer? Do I subconsciously avoid deep consideration of “place” and our race’s role in its current state —through colonizing, exploiting, marginalizing. hooks admonishes us to “decolonize our minds in Western culture to be able to think differently about nature” and place (p32).
I appreciated hooks' definitions of place from both a broad ecological sense and a narrower human sense. Black farmers and citizens of the agrarian south understood themselves to be ecologically interconnected with nature. “That connection with nature and God enabled blacks to recognize that
‘white folks were not gods’ (for if they were they could shape nature)” and gave black folks “an oppositional sensibility” (p118). “Indeed, experiencing the divine through union with nature was a way to transcend the imposed belief that skin color and race were the most important aspects of one’s identity” (p62).
While hooks celebrates the healing and hope that an appropriate relationship with nature brings, she laments the mass migration of blacks from the rural south to urban settings which uprooted them from place and the freedom and sovereignty offered by farm and nature. In a sense, many traded one form of
oppression for another. hooks experienced a similar loss of freedom with her move to urban areas:
“The fearlessness and awe I experienced as a child belonging in nature imbued me with a power and confidence I soon lost in the city where I felt invisible, powerless, and lost” (p 63). I agree that it is much easier to appreciate our dependence on nature when we have a relationship with the natural world. Whether we realize it or not, we need nature to survive and thrive.
In her essays on inclusive human community, hooks primarily addresses the harm caused by the hegemonic oppression of blacks and others. For example, she shared the terror that whiteness evokes in the black imagination using both historical examples as well as personal experiences from her childhood,
academia, and travel. Denial and erasure of racism is an attempt to “diffuse the representation of whiteness as terror in the black imagination...The eagerness with which contemporary society does
away with racism, replacing this recognition with evocations of pluralism diversity that further mask reality, is a response to the terror. It has also become a way to perpetuate the terror by providing a cover, a hiding place. Black people still feel the terror, still associate it with whiteness” but are easily silenced “by accusations of reverse racism or by suggesting that black folks who talk about the ways we
are terrorized by whites are merely evoking victimization to demand special treatment” (p.103-104).
Throughout her book, bell hooks presents techniques of meaningful resistance for both blacks and
whites including: reclaiming history and recognizing the contribution of black individuals in many realms
including agriculture and the arts; reestablishing our relationship with nature for the health of the planet
as well as our own spiritual and physical well-being; attaining sovereignty through sustainable and subsistence farming; overcoming systemic racism through intentional relationships and acts of solidarity and inclusion; and educating through the arts about the restorative power of living in harmony with one another and with nature.
Although challenging and convicting for members of the dominant culture, this book is for anyone who wants to heal and/or grow inclusive, diverse, and life-giving community. “Currently in our nation Americans of all colors feel bereft of a sense of “belonging’ to either a place or a community. Yet most
people still long for community and that yearning is the place of possibility, the place where we might begin as a nation to think and dream anew about the building of beloved community." (p. 85).
This book review was an assignment for a class, which is why it is so detailed!
Throughout her young adult life, hooks never envisioned returning to her backwoods Kentucky home, which she described as a place of family dysfunction and racial oppression.
But in academic and urban settings, she felt pressure to hide her southern roots while facing more indirect forms of racism, inhibiting her ability to find authentic community. Neither in her travels or varied residences could hooks find the same values and close-knit community of her Kentucky home.
In her book, hooks frequently references the narcissistic colonizing worldview of the dominant white culture, which caused me to wonder how this mindset influenced my interpretation of "place." Historically, white people have failed to consider a place’s purpose, community, personality, or culture before dramatically entering and imposing ourselves. Before I enter a place, do I contemplate its purpose, its people, its history and how my presence might
impact the community (negatively or positively)? Or am I only assessing what it has to offer? Do I subconsciously avoid deep consideration of “place” and our race’s role in its current state —through colonizing, exploiting, marginalizing. hooks admonishes us to “decolonize our minds in Western culture to be able to think differently about nature” and place (p32).
I appreciated hooks' definitions of place from both a broad ecological sense and a narrower human sense. Black farmers and citizens of the agrarian south understood themselves to be ecologically interconnected with nature. “That connection with nature and God enabled blacks to recognize that
‘white folks were not gods’ (for if they were they could shape nature)” and gave black folks “an oppositional sensibility” (p118). “Indeed, experiencing the divine through union with nature was a way to transcend the imposed belief that skin color and race were the most important aspects of one’s identity” (p62).
While hooks celebrates the healing and hope that an appropriate relationship with nature brings, she laments the mass migration of blacks from the rural south to urban settings which uprooted them from place and the freedom and sovereignty offered by farm and nature. In a sense, many traded one form of
oppression for another. hooks experienced a similar loss of freedom with her move to urban areas:
“The fearlessness and awe I experienced as a child belonging in nature imbued me with a power and confidence I soon lost in the city where I felt invisible, powerless, and lost” (p 63). I agree that it is much easier to appreciate our dependence on nature when we have a relationship with the natural world. Whether we realize it or not, we need nature to survive and thrive.
In her essays on inclusive human community, hooks primarily addresses the harm caused by the hegemonic oppression of blacks and others. For example, she shared the terror that whiteness evokes in the black imagination using both historical examples as well as personal experiences from her childhood,
academia, and travel. Denial and erasure of racism is an attempt to “diffuse the representation of whiteness as terror in the black imagination...The eagerness with which contemporary society does
away with racism, replacing this recognition with evocations of pluralism diversity that further mask reality, is a response to the terror. It has also become a way to perpetuate the terror by providing a cover, a hiding place. Black people still feel the terror, still associate it with whiteness” but are easily silenced “by accusations of reverse racism or by suggesting that black folks who talk about the ways we
are terrorized by whites are merely evoking victimization to demand special treatment” (p.103-104).
Throughout her book, bell hooks presents techniques of meaningful resistance for both blacks and
whites including: reclaiming history and recognizing the contribution of black individuals in many realms
including agriculture and the arts; reestablishing our relationship with nature for the health of the planet
as well as our own spiritual and physical well-being; attaining sovereignty through sustainable and subsistence farming; overcoming systemic racism through intentional relationships and acts of solidarity and inclusion; and educating through the arts about the restorative power of living in harmony with one another and with nature.
Although challenging and convicting for members of the dominant culture, this book is for anyone who wants to heal and/or grow inclusive, diverse, and life-giving community. “Currently in our nation Americans of all colors feel bereft of a sense of “belonging’ to either a place or a community. Yet most
people still long for community and that yearning is the place of possibility, the place where we might begin as a nation to think and dream anew about the building of beloved community." (p. 85).
This book review was an assignment for a class, which is why it is so detailed!
April 14, 2022
This book is a profoundly spiritual meditation on bell hooks’s slow journey back to Appalachia. As she terms it, “Kentucky is my fate”; the most important factor in deciding where to live, she tells us, is deciding where to die—where to be so connected to a place as to become part of it, dust to dust. As a result, hooks finds herself returning to the Kentucky hills where she was born. As the one of the great Black cultural and feminist critics of our time, however, she builds a complex understanding of what belonging to a place might mean, conscious of race, class, gender, and economics, not just a sentimental homage to a romanticized “homeland.” Perhaps her most profound contribution in this collection of essays is her interview with Wendell Berry (and her ongoing conversation with his writing in other parts of this collection). It’s a beautiful portrait of how to engage honestly across profound differences, and how to learn from one another with respect.
If the whole book were like the first few essays (plus her interview with Berry), this review would be an easy five stars. However, as essay collections often do, this text sometimes meanders from the focus of the first few chapters and the last few installments. All of them are at least somewhat interesting, but few of them are as profound and magisterial as “Kentucky Is My Fate,” “Moved by Mountains,” and “To Be Whole and Holy.”
If the whole book were like the first few essays (plus her interview with Berry), this review would be an easy five stars. However, as essay collections often do, this text sometimes meanders from the focus of the first few chapters and the last few installments. All of them are at least somewhat interesting, but few of them are as profound and magisterial as “Kentucky Is My Fate,” “Moved by Mountains,” and “To Be Whole and Holy.”
February 9, 2024
Always love bell hooks’ voice - her recounts & critiques. These essays had a few points of feeling redundant, but overall showed so much thoughtfulness. She explains how despite flaws in her rural childhood home in Kentucky, she has never felt more complete than when she is in the hills. I enjoyed reading what her experiences as a black woman in a rural community were like. Her high appreciation and gratitude to nature being a large factor paired with going against what she “should” do or what was expected of her - to live out her days in NYC.
My main feeling finishing this book is to recognize how interconnected we are and all that makes us whole - where we come from, salient identities, nature, relationships, conflicts. It all matters!
I could write more but I’ll take a breath.
My main feeling finishing this book is to recognize how interconnected we are and all that makes us whole - where we come from, salient identities, nature, relationships, conflicts. It all matters!
I could write more but I’ll take a breath.
January 31, 2025
bell hooks explores belonging and its intersections with race and class in a very personal way that sheds light on the perception of what it means to be Black and from the south. I enjoyed her critiques of traveling and moving as a way to experience the colonizer mindset and feel like an « explorer » « discovering » new places. Belonging and rooting yourself in the land of a place is a radical notion in opposition to the current culture of how disconnection to place in the age of job hopping and ongoing economic decline. I love her poetic analyses though and enjoyed listening to this book as it felt like meditative and reflective journey that I experienced while walking around my area.
January 9, 2021
This was more of a compilation of essays rather than a cohesive narrative, but I got used to the jumbled thoughts that seemed smashed together and unedited. Hooks shares scattered memories and observations, writing primarily to keep her grandmother alive. Her insights are uniquely hers, and I especially liked the way she spoke of quilting and feminism, building an authentic life/living authentically, black farming and subsistence in rural Kentucky, sub-cultures and fringes and outsiderness, segregation and neighbors and fear and blacks imagining of whites.
November 29, 2025
this is obviously from the standpoint of an American, but still, I was missing some perspectives (of the homeless, immigrants, disabled mainly) that I feel like would have created a new dimension to the reflections. the essays follow each other and could have been better edited and possibly put in another order. however, always a cool read and I got many new perspectives on "city" and "countryside" and the allowance of who carries "culture"
April 17, 2022
For content and writing, this is clearly a 5-star book. hooks has such a clear voice, is so intentional with her words, and provides such a sense of the places and people she includes, that this is a fest of imagery and poise. I've never been even close to Kentucky, but I feel drawn to it now.
This edition had numerous typographical errors, and being a collection of essay written over a variety of years, some parts were quite repetitive. Would have been worth reworking a few of these pieces to streamline the ideas.
This edition had numerous typographical errors, and being a collection of essay written over a variety of years, some parts were quite repetitive. Would have been worth reworking a few of these pieces to streamline the ideas.
December 26, 2025
i liked her thoughts, but she uses too many buzz words ("misogynist white supremacist racist patriarchy" was an actual phrase multiple times in a chapter) and can be a bit preachily indignant. don't get me wrong, that has its place, it just didn't really click with me.
November 3, 2024
best book of 2024
will need four more months to work through all the notes from here
will need four more months to work through all the notes from here
December 19, 2024
so beautiful. bell hooks forever
December 8, 2024
Gorgeous!
October 31, 2017
Bell Hooks is a black female writer, and she was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. She was born as Gloria Watkins, and she got the name bell hooks from her great grandmother Bell Blair Hooks. The topics in her book are always on racism, nature, and the environment.
In this book Hooks wrote some beautiful quotes like "To dancing in a circle of love-to living in beloved community". In this quote she means that she loves her community and wants to stay with her community.
In this book hooks talks about many characters including her family members, poets, writers and authors. She talks about her grandparents, cousins, and parents doing agrarian work. Her family mostly harvested the tobacco plant. Hooks refers to Wendell Berry, an American novelist, cultural critic, poet, environmental activist, and a farmer. He was also born in Kentucky, and he mostly talks on topics like agriculture, rural life and community. This is the reason why hooks, again and again, gives references to him in her book. She likes his topics and how he explains our community problems, about the environment of our planet and rural life.
I like this book because Hooks mentions some key ideas about our environment and community, how we protect our planet and how to maintain our community. In this book we can understand about racism, discrimination, and how white supremacy disregards black people. This book will open our eyes about some certain things that really happen in our nation.
I like this book and I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.
In this book Hooks wrote some beautiful quotes like "To dancing in a circle of love-to living in beloved community". In this quote she means that she loves her community and wants to stay with her community.
In this book hooks talks about many characters including her family members, poets, writers and authors. She talks about her grandparents, cousins, and parents doing agrarian work. Her family mostly harvested the tobacco plant. Hooks refers to Wendell Berry, an American novelist, cultural critic, poet, environmental activist, and a farmer. He was also born in Kentucky, and he mostly talks on topics like agriculture, rural life and community. This is the reason why hooks, again and again, gives references to him in her book. She likes his topics and how he explains our community problems, about the environment of our planet and rural life.
I like this book because Hooks mentions some key ideas about our environment and community, how we protect our planet and how to maintain our community. In this book we can understand about racism, discrimination, and how white supremacy disregards black people. This book will open our eyes about some certain things that really happen in our nation.
I like this book and I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.
October 31, 2017
Wellington DaSilva
10/31/17
Belonging: A Culture of Place published in 2009 by Routledge in New York is a first Bell Hooks book I have picked up to read, despite many glaring grammar error and a lot of repetition throughout her story I thought that this non-fiction mind opening book was great. Hooks touches on many topics, mainly race, environment, home place, and a great interview in the book which was an enjoyable touch. I rate this book 4 stars. I liked following bell hooks memories from when she was a young lady learning about the world, travelling around trying to see where she felt comfort. She also writes about home and her unsettled thoughts of returning to her old Kentucky. I compared this book to the real world now, and honestly it's not much different from her childhood; it's actually very eye opening on how badly we treat the earth and one another. This book is a great lesson for people that like to make changes in their lives. After reading this book I will be reading more about bell hooks and her other journeys. I hope you will too.
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