bell hooks on Political Resistance and Change
In Yearning, bell hooks highlights the common “sentiments shared by folks across race, class, gender, and sexual practice.”2 Whether they be men or women, working class or privileged, many Americans now desire “the kind of revolutionary change that will end domination and oppression.”3 In particular, they long to live in a world without racism, sexism, homophobia, imperialism, and exploitation. Rather than dismiss this ideal condition as an unattainable dream, hooks lauds it as a necessary collective desire, because the “shared space and feeling” might function as a site of “common ground” and potential transformation.4 But, without love, this anticipated sociopolitical shift may prove elusive.
In her love trilogy, hooks displays her usual commitment to interrogating and eradicating racism, sexism, and systems of exploitation. She also offers practical how-to lessons in loving to men and women in general, and black people in particular, all of whom have grown up and developed their capacity to love within a patriarchal, racist, and nihilistic culture.
This chapter traces hooks’s treatment of love in Salvation, All About Love, and Communion, three books which effectively marry theory with a cogent analysis of America’s ills. Her theory of love serves as “an indispensable weapon in struggle because it provides…certain kinds of illumination, certain kinds of insights that are requisite if we are to act effectively.”5 Love opens the door to such “insight,” which enables people to see that they are interconnected and interdependent. And that love of self must be extended to the so-called other. Following in the footsteps of such towering figures as Martin L. King, Jr., James Baldwin, and June Jordan, hooks offers love as a powerful location from which to combat and transform the unjust material conditions inherent in the “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” operating in America.6
While patriarchal popular culture often relegates love to the feminized realm of weakness and sentimentality, hooks effectively posits love as a powerful political and spiritual force capable of transforming “all spheres of American life—politics, religion, the workplace, domestic households, [and] intimate relations.”7 Making concrete our nation’s need for a bold and transformative love, she anchors her claims in writings devoted exclusively to the subject. Here hooks reflects that, while communities committed to substantive social, political, and economic change have met with varying degrees of success, the “great social movements for freedom and justice in our society” endorsed a “love ethic.”8 If contemporary society were to genuinely embrace the love ethic, she writes, our culture’s apathy toward domestic violence, unemployment, and homelessness would give way to compassionate attention.9 She further explains how the implementation of the love ethic could transform not only public policy, but also the lives of individuals whose realities are largely overdetermined by the dynamics of class, race, and gender. In short, love, the potential salve for our nation’s yearning, could “affect the good of everyone.”10
If, as hooks tells us, “[w]e cannot effectively resist domination if our efforts to create meaningful, lasting personal and social change are not grounded in a love ethic,”11 then people—across distinctions of color, class, and gender—must embrace it to know true political freedom. Striking a prophetic note, hooks urgently argues that love is our salvation: the life raft that our society, mired in despair and discontent, must grab hold of and cling to.
The first section of this chapter defines and explores the parameters of hooks’s conception of love. Second, it interrogates her theory of love by analyzing Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition (1901), James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time (1962), and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970), through the lens of the following questions: What are the “salvational” effects of love? Can it transform the oppressed and the oppressor alike? Does love have the power to disrupt what George Lipsitz terms the “possessive investment in whiteness”? What, if any, are the consequences of loving? Each of the books under study emphasizes a key aspect of hooks’s radical love. Chesnutt’s novel explores the impact of love on white supremacy; Baldwin’s text wrestles with the political implications of loving the self and one’s oppressor, while Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye highlights the harmful impact of sexism and racism on a black family devoid of love. The final section of the chapter will briefly reflect on the risks of loving, as seen in Beloved (1987), another of Morrison’s novels. Grounding hooks’s theory in literary analysis will help to elucidate love’s political implications and its capacity to facilitate meaningful structural change.
Drawing on M. Scott Peck’s formulation, hooks crafts a multifaceted definition of love comprised, in part, of “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”12 Speaking to love’s political relevance, this conceptualization stresses the capacity of a human being to move beyond the self to work for a cause that may or may not directly benefit one’s self. The willingness to engage in selfless behavior presumably implies the existence of a “positive moral capacity of self,” which, writes Ruth Smith, is “the substantive motivation for sacrifice and justice and the resources with which human connection can be formed at all.”13 I therefore posit that loving, altruistic individuals possess an internal moral impulse that compels them to aspire toward ideals such as justice, equality, and compassion. In practical terms, love finds expression when individuals and communities devote themselves to realizing good (i.e., justice) on behalf of others in personal or political contexts.
A similar understanding of love informs Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s perspective that “We cannot long survive spiritually separated in a world that is geographically together. In the final analysis, I must not ignore the wounded man on life’s Jericho Road, because he is a part of me and I am a part of him. His agony diminishes me, and his salvation enlarges me.”14 In this sense, love becomes politicized because it compels the recognition of the humanity and need of strangers; it underscores the fact that “the self is always already socially linked and connected to a broader nexus of social relationships.”15 Dr. King’s allusion to Jericho evokes Jesus’s response to the lawyer’s inquiry about the identity of his “neighbor.” By way of explanation, Jesus shares the parable of the Good Samaritan, implying that one’s neighbor could be anyone in need of mercy. The Samaritan was moved by compassion to, in a sense, “suffer with” the victim. He not only felt sympathy for the injured man but also took action which symbolically undid the violence of the thieves and neglect of indifferent onlookers.16 This parable illustrates a key aspect of hooks’s politics of love, bringing into relief an expanded definition of the term neighbor. Her politicization of the biblical injunction to love one’s neighbor as one’s self encourages the extension of compassion to local individuals, as well as the cultivation of “[c]oncern for the collective good of our nation.”17
While hooks’s love ethic disrupts the borders of rugged individualism, it also challenges “the more widely accepted assumption that we love instinctually,”18 and foregrounds expressions of love within and beyond intimate and familial contexts. As Peck asserts, “Love is as love does. Love is an act of will.”19 Expanding definitions of love beyond the romantic realm, hooks’s and Peck’s conception places it in the realm of practicality. In concert with the teachings of Jesus, Gandhi, and Dr. King, all of which attest to humanity’s capacity to practice love directed toward the ends of justice, hooks’s politics places a premium on one’s capacity to exercise the will to love, as one would a muscle.
Although hooks would agree with Dr. King that love “redeems,”20 she especially stresses the need for white “accountability and atonement,”21 as well as black responsibility. More specifically, in a speech delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in 1957, Dr. King advised blacks that: “…at the very root of love is the power of redemption. You just keep loving people…even though they’re mistreating you…. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long…. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see…. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative.”22
Here Dr. King emphasizes the salvational effects of blacks’ love upon whites; his assumption is that love will cleanse the latter and save them from their own hatred. But hooks directly challenges whites to act as agents of change as well, further suggesting that “[f]ocusing on the power of forgiveness, King also often overlooked the importance of accountability.”23 Not only should blacks forgive whites, but “[f]or genuine forgiveness to be transformative, white people undergoing a conversion process by which they divest themselves of white supremacist thinking would necessarily have to focus on accountability and atonement.”24 This “conversion process” would involve, among other things, confronting racial privilege and committing one’s self to anti-racist struggle. At the same time, she advises that blacks return to love because “[w]e need a progressive, transformative vision of social justice that would combine the wisdom of a successful nonviolent, love-based freedom struggle with the insights of a direct-action, decolonizing movement for black self-determination and liberation.”25 hooks therefore combines King’s love ethic with the spirit of self-determination.26
For hooks, such a love is inclusive of, but not limited to, religious expression; she does acknowledge, however, its metaphysical dimensions. Peck’s conviction that love requires the “will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth”27 prompts hooks to explain that: “An individual does not need to be a believer in a religion to embrace the idea that there is an animating principle in the self—a life force (some of us call it soul) that when nurtured enhances our capacity to be more fully self-actualized and able to engage in communion with the world around us.”28
Love, then, requires that its practitioners undergo a spiritual maturation process, inside or outside of the church, so as to be useful to the broader human community. Indeed, she does encourage “black folks who identify as Christian or as believers in other religious faiths” to “return to sacred writings about love and embrace these as guides showing us the way to lead our lives”;29 but hooks also liberates love from narrow sectarian concerns, making it accessible to secularists who wish to practice love, sans the dogma and institutional proscriptions.
But how does one put this love into practice? Casting a necessarily broad net, she argues: “To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients—care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.”30 But what happens when social relations are devoid of the elements listed above? One of the primary obstacles to love that has plagued American society since its inception, white supremacy, is vividly dramatized in Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition. In particular, this novel illustrates how an investment in whiteness has historically prevented Americans of European descent from communicating honestly with, respecting, and recognizing the humanity of Americans of African descent; it also explores the conditions under which transformational love might emerge and overcome centuries of cultural and structural racism. It is my contention that, while selfishness and individualism rooted in racial supremacy serve as formidable obstacles, love can nonetheless create conditions that give rise to improved sociopolitical realities.
Chesnutt drafted his novel during the “Nadir of Black Experience,”31 the post-Reconstruction, pre-World War I era that bore witness to the repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, reversals of progressive Reconstruction legislation, the dramatic rise in lynching, and the passing of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).32 Despite these dismal conditions, notes Carla Peterson, “the period 1892–1903 represents a second flourishing of the African American novel, breathing new life into a form born forty years earlier with William Wells Brown’s Clotel (1853).”33 This, she explains, is consistent with Mikhail Bakhtin’s finding that “the novel tends to make its appearance at moments of social crisis.”34 Joining the ranks of Frances Harper, Sutton Griggs, and Pauline Hopkins, Chesnutt engaged in the battle of cultural politics, emphasizing in his novel the humanity of black people, while undermining the myth of “Anglo-Saxon purity,” the imagined basis of white supremacist power.35
The Marrow provides a fictionalized account of the historical events preceding the antiblack riot of Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898. In the town of “Wellington,” as the plot unfolds, there is an increase in white resentment and hostility toward the peaceable black members of their community. Major Carteret, prominent white citizen and local editor, uses his paper as the instrument to fuel whites’ fears that the black vote will result in “Negro domination.”36 Contrasted with Carteret is Dr. Miller, a fair-skinned, northern-educated black physician whose life has been dedicated to the “uplifting” of his people.37 His biracial wife, Janet, is the unacknowledged half-sister of Carteret’s wife, Olivia. As the novel progresses and racial tensions rise, ultimately culminating in the deadly riot, the Carteret and Miller families are forced to confront their suppressed historical ties and interwoven destinies.
While Dr. Miller exercises the will to love his oppressor throughout the story, his moral goodness appears to have a negligible impact on the racists who denigrate his blackness. His love, in general, emerges as a set of practices and internal attitudes. Specifically, Miller’s Christianity finds expression in his willingness to forgive his enemies rather than resent them for refusing to extend to blacks full human and civil rights.38 The exact opposite of Josh Green, an African-American laborer who represents the revolutionary black nationalist response to white violence, Miller endorses the biblical view that patient endurance is the preferable response to aggression.39 Not only does he adopt a spirit of meekness rather than confrontation,40 but Miller also places his faith in whites’ ability to redeem themselves. He therefore:
…liked to believe that the race antagonism which hampered his progress and that of his people was a mere temporary thing, the outcome of former conditions, and bound to disappear in time, and that when a colored man should demonstrate to the community in which he lived that he possessed character and power, that community would find a way in which to enlist his services for the public good. He had already made himself useful, and had received many kind words and other marks of appreciation.41
Implicit in this passage is Miller’s assumption that white prejudice is somewhat justified. Nonetheless, he believes that whites’ admiration of his hard work will inevitably overcome their racism. Despite the wrongs that he has suffered, he persists in loving his oppressor; he recognizes and respects the humanity of the whites who mistreat him, and his charitable spirit finds expression in a willingness to make himself “useful” to them. In so doing, Miller develops a reputation for “spending money in the community” and “contribut[ing] to its prosperity.”42 The question is whether his self-sacrificial nature can have a redemptive effect upon moral members of the white community.
While overt racists are easy to locate in the novel, equally problematic are the novel’s “liberal” characters,43 Drs. Burns and Price, neither of whom undergoes a conversion in response to Miller’s love. The behavior of these white physicians, as we shall see, underscores the distinction between an abstract commitment to justice on the one hand, and a willingness to take moral action on the other. In failing to commit themselves to the eradication of injustice, they position themselves in an antithetical relation to love. As hooks asserts, “[w]hen love is present the desire to dominate and exercise power cannot rule the day.”44 The commitment to ending domination and seeking justice, then, is necessarily a form of love in expression.45
Early in the novel, Burns encounters an opportunity to strike a blow for racial equality when southern physician, Dr. Price, summons him from Philadelphia to perform an urgent medical procedure on Carteret’s baby. Taking the South-bound train to Wellington, North Carolina, Burns encounters the well-respected Miller, whom he promptly asks to join him at the operating table. Shortly after Burns arrives at the home of his new patient, Carteret informs him that: “in the South we do not call negro [sic] doctors to attend white patients. I could not permit a negro to enter my house upon such an errand.”46 As Peterson notes, “Major Carteret and his colleagues invent a white supremacist ideology to strengthen their class’s very marrow,” thereby displaying their own, rather than blacks’ inability to “function as proper citizens.”47 Initially Burns pleads Miller’s case, and ostensibly rejects this tradition of racial supremacy. But he ultimately fails to take a definitive stand against whiteness.
Tellingly, Burns does not take offense at the explicit racism that Carteret has directed toward his admirable black colleague, but instead responds: “I do not know what Miller’s social value may be…or whether you gain or lose by your attitude towards him. I have invited him here in a strictly professional capacity, with which his color is not at all concerned.”48 Leaving to the Southern patriarchs the accurate calculation of blacks’ “social value,” Burns does not engage the question of racial equality in the public sector. He asserts himself apolitically, refusing to challenge the racism that circumscribed the opportunities and resources of Miller in particular, and African Americans, in general. He is indifferent to the fact that Miller’s disadvantage, which has everything to do with color, directly advantages whites in the medical profession.
Rather than take a stand for Miller’s human rights, he “merely stand[s] upon [his] professional rights” to have Miller work beside him.49 In short, he is outraged that his individual liberties are being thwarted by an inconvenient prejudice, and therefore persists in his intention to proceed with Miller. Even after Burns capitulates to Carteret’s desire to jettison Miller, his concerns remain confined to the narrow parameters of personal interest. Rather than meditating on the racist practice that his silence condones, Burns dwells angrily on the fact that he will “feel humiliated” when he encounters Miller in the future.50 hooks’s observation that a “[w]orship of individualism has in part led us to the unhealthy culture of narcissism that is so all pervasive in our society” applies not only to the postmodern present, but to Burns’s cultural moment as well.51 That he “worships” individualism rather than God, or moral ideals such as justice and equality, suggests a lack of spiritual maturity—a soul sickness expressing as an exclusive love of self.
Although Burns finds morally reprehensible black oppression in principle, his individualism prevents him from involving himself in Miller’s struggle for human rights. He wishes to be identified as a “gentleman” first, and a “white man” second,52 but this antiracist sentiment proves to be impotent, finding no expression in meaningful action. Regardless of his lack of action on Miller’s behalf, Burns believes himself to be a decent and civilized gentleman. Displaying what Robert Birt would term the “bad faith of whiteness,”53 Burns “flees the truths and perplexities of human existence; in short, he flees himself and alienates himself from his fellows.”54 Put another way, Burns, turning away from truth, remains deluded and convinced that he is basically a “good guy” despite his compliance. In reality, though, he reinforces the racist order in which he is immersed and further distances himself from blacks’ struggle for human rights; that is, he refuses to see that systemic racism is enabled by the apathy of complacent whites like himself. Failing to take an unpopular stand for justice, Burns refuses to sacrifice himself in any way, which, hooks reminds us, is “a necessary dimension of loving practice and living in community.”55
Similar to Dr. Burns, Dr. Price has grown fond of Miller, whom he describes as a “capable man” who is “very much liked by the white physicians.”56 But rather than find common ground with Miller in his time of need, Price “remain[s] true to an identity that provides [him] with resources, power, and opportunity.”57 In short, his racism distorts his moral judgment. Having successfully argued, on racial grounds, for the exclusion of Miller during the operation, Price later faces the dilemma of informing the black doctor that his services are no longer required: “He had meant to state the situation to Miller frankly, but now that the moment had come he wavered. He was a fine physician, but he shrank from strenuous responsibilities. It had been easy to theorize about the negro [sic]; it was more difficult to look this man in the eyes—whom at this moment he felt to be as essentially a gentleman as himself—and tell him the humiliating truth.”58
In applying racial theory to a specific human being, Price detects slippage between the discourse of race and Miller’s humanity. His suspicion that Miller, like himself, is “essentially a gentleman” is important for two reasons. First, it signals Price’s awareness that dominant representations of race, rather than accurately describing blacks, merely serve white supremacist ends; this accounts for Price’s shame at the prospect of telling Miller “the humiliating truth” that his blackness has barred him from the operating room. This passage also confirms that Price, like Burns, finds comfort in “the bad faith of whiteness.”59 That is, Price continues to view himself as a noble “gentleman” despite his unwillingness to agitate for equitable social relations. He can therefore lie to Miller (with “apparent regret”) that the latter has arrived too late to aid in the procedure because Price is not genuinely remorseful.60 Very much unlike a gentleman, Price fails to demonstrate integrity, refuses to defend his black “friend,” and avoids communicating honestly with him. Unable to plead ignorance of his dominant position in the racialized social order, Price notes that: “[h]is claim of superiority to the colored doctor rested fundamentally upon the fact that he was white and Miller was not; and yet this superiority, for which he could claim no credit, since he had not made himself, was the very breath of his nostrils,—he would not have changed places with the other for wealth untold.”61
Although whiteness is an “unmarked category” that is “very hard to see,”62 this passage makes it manifest as the necessary counterpart to Miller’s blackness. As Stephen Knadler writes, this novel puts whiteness on display, “forcing them [white readers] to stand in the literary marketplace, as not the makers of history and science, but as objects gazed upon, studied and assessed by the African-American subject.”63
Thus, Chesnutt’s “study” elucidates the white supremacist pattern of thought. That Price would not conceive of relinquishing his whiteness for “wealth untold” speaks to its incalculable value. He revels in the “rewards of whiteness,”64 and relies upon what DuBois has termed the “psychological wage,” which affirms whiteness over all things black.65 Undoubtedly, Price’s investment in whiteness overrides his moral impulse to engage Miller’s humanity.
Chesnutt’s portrayal of the white doctor’s machinations is helpful for two additional reasons, the first of which is that Price displays a remarkably limited imagination in his assessment of his relations with Miller. Reflecting that he would never exchange places with the black doctor suggests that only two subject positions exist: the dominant and the subordinate. However Robin Kelly reminds us that “[t]here are very few contemporary political spaces where the energies of love and imagination are understood and respected as powerful social forces.”66 Imagination has political implications because it can provide an alternative to white supremacy, liberating the psyche from reliance upon Manichean power relations.
In addition, Price’s unwillingness to strive toward mutuality is important because it illustrates the reluctance of those in power generally to “voluntarily” give up privilege. Since doing so guarantees the experience of loss and change, the advantaged are frequently slow to release the reigns of power. As hooks notes, “[f]ear of radical changes leads many citizens of our nation to betray their minds and hearts…. Obviously, it is not in the interest of the conservative status quo to encourage us to confront our collective fear of love.”67 Her assessment of twenty-first century social dynamics similarly applies to Price’s cultural moment, when social and political structures were in flux. That is to say, white supremacy remained intact, but necessarily transmuted itself in the wake of abolition. Although it could no longer find expression in master–slave relations, whiteness nonetheless reigned supreme, absorbing and overcoming blacks’ recent political gains. It is likely that Price makes little effort to pursue racial justice because he is afraid of redefining himself during a socially turbulent moment, without the crutch and privilege of whiteness. But hooks would counter that, “[w]hen we love, we no longer allow our hearts to be held captive by fear.”68 This point Sojourner Truth understood well in her day; urging the male opponents of nineteenth-century suffragists to become equally fearless, she observed: “I know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when it closes up again.”69 Letting go of racial privilege requires venturing out into this unknown psychic territory, bearing the pain of change, and assisting the process rather than resisting it. But Price’s fear, however, overwhelms him, driving him deeper into the refuge of whiteness.
Although individualism, greed, and fear trump love in the examples cited above, The Marrow’s conclusion gestures toward the possibility that redemptive love, bubbling up in the midst of extraordinary suffering, can disrupt resentment, intervene in white supremacist ideology, and soften the heart hardened by hatred. The emergence of love in the thick of suffering70 will be discussed in two contexts: that of Carteret, whose awareness of another’s suffering opens him to the possibility of love, and that of the Millers, whose sensitivity to their enemy’s pain moves them to take loving action, despite their own suffering.
More specifically, Carteret is catapulted into a state of compassion when grappling with the “imminence of his child’s peril,”71 and the reality of Miller’s despair. Early in the novel, Carteret coldly refuses to welcome Miller into his home because the black doctor is not his “social equal.”72 But when the prospect of his son’s untimely death looms before him, Carteret is compelled to confront his racial attitudes; he desperately requires the assistance of the black doctor on whose abilities he must now depend. After asking Miller to rush to his home to save his own son, however, he learns that Miller’s child has just been slain in the race riot which Carteret, himself, had fomented. Contending with this news:
[i]n the agony of his own predicament,—in the horror of the situation at Miller’s house,—for a moment the veil of race prejudice was rent in twain, and he saw things as they were, in their correct proportions and relations,—saw clearly and convincingly that he had no standing here, in the presence of death,… Miller’s refusal to go with him was pure, elemental justice; he could not blame the doctor for his stand. He was indeed conscious of a certain involuntary admiration for a man who held in his hands the power of life and death, and could use it, with strict justice, to avenge his own wrongs. In Dr. Miller’s place he would have done the same thing.73
Here, Carteret brackets his “lifelong beliefs”74 about white supremacy; he sets aside his racial “interest”75 and finally sees Miller as the human being whom he has wronged. During this epiphany, which we might describe as a moment of grace, a degree of good emerges in Carteret’s soul. On the subject of love and suffering, Pope John Paul II writes that suffering is “supernatural because it is rooted in the divine mystery of the Redemption of the world, and it is likewise deeply human because in it the person discovers himself, his own humanity, his own dignity.”76 Seemingly, Carteret undergoes a mystical experience of sorts, during which the “veil of race prejudice” is swept aside supernaturally. This opens his heart, enabling him to recognize Miller’s humanity. Pope John Paul II further theorizes that: “[f]ollowing the parable of the Gospel, we could say that suffering, which is present under so many different forms in our human world, is also present in order to unleash love in the human person, that unselfish gift of one’s ‘I’ on behalf of other people, especially those who suffer.”77
Faced with Miller’s suffering, Carteret is able to imaginatively project himself into the latter’s place; recognizing Miller as his moral equivalent, he experiences his “I” as though it were Miller’s. He not only understands Miller’s refusal, but further considers it to be justified, given the mistreatment rendered. In this pivotal moment, Carteret’s assumptions about black inferiority dissipate; while it would be an exaggeration to suggest that he feels love for Miller in the moment, he does take a significant, albeit preliminary, step in the direction of demonstrating a new capacity to love Miller. In the throws of his own pain, he is affected by Miller’s suffering, and comes to view him as a man deserving of justice. The pain that begins to redeem him opens him to the possibility of love. But, as hooks reminds us, love alone is not enough to “bring an end to difficulties”;78 it is, however, an essential starting point. Newly illuminated, Carteret is positioned to act on his recent acknowledgment of Miller’s humanity by expressing love in the form of antiracist struggle.
Though Miller initially refuses to help Carteret’s son, the ultimate decision to assist the child functions as a powerful act of love—taken in the midst of suffering—that might further redeem Carteret, and enable racial reconciliation. Invoking the spirit of Christ, who demonstrated love for humanity through his sacrifice on the cross, the Millers similarly embody compassion during their moment of crisis. In the language of hooks, they “utilize…the dimensions of love—‘care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.’”79 After Miller rejects Carteret, whose reckless racism indirectly caused the death of his own son, he is “moved in spite of himself” during the subsequent appeal of Olivia, Carteret’s wife.80 In effect, his heart opens, and he demonstrates his capacity to “care.” As Pope John Paul II might suggest, Miller’s suffering makes him “sensitive to the suffering of others”;81 he therefore “gives himself, his very ‘I,’ opening this ‘I’ to the other person.”82 Softening, he places in the hands of his wife Janet—Olivia’s shunned half-sister—the decision regarding Carteret’s baby. She ultimately sends Miller forth to be of service.
In yielding, the couple not only shows its capacity to care, but it also displays a commitment to justice, and a responsibility to, and respect for, mankind. While they may not “trust” the Carterets as individuals, trust being an element of the love ethic, the Millers do trust in their own capacity to act morally in the world. Having full knowledge of their enemy’s transgressions, they choose to extend themselves, practicing love rather than exacting vengeance. Through her tears, Janet therefore declares:
I throw you back your father’s name, your father’s wealth, your sisterly recognition. I want none of them,—they are bought too dear!… But that you may know that a woman may be foully wronged, and yet may have a heart to feel, even for one who has injured her, you may have your child’s life, if my husband can save it!83
Responding cautiously to Janet’s generosity, Stephen P. Knadler writes that “Chesnutt’s novel ends less on a note of forgiveness than of Utopian open-endedness.”84 It may well be the case that Janet “renounces neither her anger nor her bitterness,”85 but these negative feelings nonetheless coexist with her will to absolve Olivia of her transgressions. In The Art of Forgiving, Lewis B. Smedes asserts that absolution “is not anti-anger, anymore than love is anti-anger.”86 In other words, the cognitive decision to forgive frequently precedes a process that unfolds in the midst of conflicting emotions such as rage, sorrow, and resentment.87
Despite her anger for her sister, Janet surrenders her desire for vengeance, and acts with compassion. Admittedly, the salvational effects of this love are unclear; in response to Janet’s charity, Olivia passionately promises her half-sister: “I will see you again, and make you take them [the mean words] back”88 The matter of lasting reconciliation between black and white necessarily remains a matter of speculation, as the book draws to an abrupt close at the conclusion of Janet’s speech. Nonetheless, the final chapter suggests that, in Carteret’s case, psychic pain can put the hard-hearted in touch with humanity—both their own and that of the other. At the same time, the Millers’ altruism reveals the capacity of the suffering to respond lovingly to others. These suggestive openings have significant sociopolitical implications, for they demonstrate the importance of empathy and identification in reconciliation. The intentional cultivation of one’s ability to see in the other one’s self is crucial to the dissolution of individualism and the forging of human connections where none previously existed.
While Chesnutt’s novel gestures toward the capacity of love to affect social transformation, Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time testifies to the centrality of love as a personally empowering strategy and politically viable force. Emerging during the civil rights movement in the 1960s, Baldwin’s manifesto bristles with righteous indignation at the slow pace of political change, and the failure of the state to extend to African Americans the democratic principles of freedom and equality. Like his intellectual predecessor, W. E. B. DuBois who declared the major “problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line,”89 Baldwin also recognized the eradication of racism as key to America’s salvation. Unlike his nationalist counterparts who responded to white Americans with rage, Baldwin advocates in his writings the cultivation of love, a powerful political force that could help to transform unequal social relations, and unjust material conditions. Baldwin’s political manifesto, constituted by letters to his nephew and to the nation, explores the urgent need for the oppressed and oppressor, alike, to love themselves and one another. Failing these concrete acts of love, he warns that our country will be unable to escape the “racial nightmare” that has been created by centuries of unjust policy and racist practice.90
Bringing to life hooks’s claim that “the trauma of white supremacy and ongoing racist assault leaves deep psychic wounds,”91 Baldwin argues that self-love is essential to the psyche and survival of black Americans immersed in an antiblack culture. In “My Dungeon Shook,” the letter to his nephew, Baldwin describes his stepfather’s “terrible life” to illustrate the consequences of internalizing whiteness.92 Having “believed what white people said about him,” Baldwin’s stepfather “was defeated long before he died.”93 Absorbing and accepting the racist logic that he was inferior to whites, his stepfather relinquished his will to define himself, and eventually his desire to live. He was, in effect, rendered powerless by the force of racism. For this reason, Baldwin counsels his nephew to choose love, which will “strengthen [him] against the loveless world.”94 In this sense, self-love functions as both a survival strategy, and source of agency. When they reject “the white man’s definitions”95 of black identity, black men and women are more likely to develop positive self-images and “‘creat[e] the conditions necessary…to move against the forces of domination and death and reclaim black life.’”96 The loving valuation of self thus facilitates the taking of meaningful action in the world.
The practice of love, however, cannot remain a purely internal matter. For Baldwin, the oppressed and oppressor must love one another in order to achieve sociopolitical freedom. He therefore urges his nephew to “accept” white people who oppose him “with love,”97 and advises the white to “become black himself” during the difficult process of change.98 “Acceptance, for Baldwin, does not connote passivity or fatalism,” writes Lawrie Balfour. “Instead, Baldwin’s notion of acceptance entails an active opposition to innocence, a confrontation with life’s harshest truths.”99 In other words, rather than remaining ignorant of the structures of white supremacy that they have inherited, whites, Baldwin argues, must acknowledge the history of racism in this country, and its manifestation in the present. It is love, not disgust that will empower blacks to help their white “brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.”100
Like hooks, Baldwin holds blacks and also whites accountable for their behavior. Specifically, whites, too, must do the difficult work of loving. Since the “white man’s unadmitted—and apparently, to him, unspeakable private fears and longings are projected onto the Negro,” writes Baldwin: “[t]he only way he can be released from the Negro’s tyrannical power over him is to consent, in effect, to become black himself, to become a part of that suffering and dancing country that he now watches wistfully from the heights of his lonely power.”101
That is, whites must realize that their history, identity, and humanness is intimately bound up with that of blacks and that the latter have borne the burden of representing in the white imaginary that which is frightening and undesirable. Rather than viewing African Americans as inferior others, therefore, whites must acknowledge and engage their humanity. Particularly useful in this recognition process is Maria Lugones’s concept of loving “world travelling,” which she identifies as antithetical to the “agonistic sense of play” prevalent in the West.102 “World travelling,” the ability to “shift from being one person to being a different person,”103 requires openness. This salubrious activity is impeded by agonistic play because the “agonistic traveller,” writes Lugones, “is a conqueror, an imperialist.”104 The rules of his game “inspire hostility,”105 and “uncertainty…about who is going to win and who is going to lose.”106 For this reason, “the playful attitude given western man’s construction of playfulness, is not a healthy, loving attitude to have in travelling across ‘worlds.’”107 Lugones therefore advises: “for people who are interested in crossing racial and ethnic boundaries, an arrogant western man’s construction of playfulness is deadly. One cannot cross the boundaries with it. One needs to give up such an attitude if one wants to travel.”108
Lugones, then, discourages the tendency to conquer, kill,109 and, I would add, exploit other worlds; such efforts to dominate people deemed unlike one’s self speak to a degree of “self-importance” and “fixed” constructions of the self.110 Similarly concerned about the lack of empathy apparent among practitioners of racism, Baldwin criticizes the “white man” who, “armed with spiritual traveler’s checks, visits [the black world] surreptitiously after dark.”111 Referring here to whites who habitually traveled into predominantly black, urban areas at night to engage in illicit relations and cultural voyeurism, Baldwin intimates that such contact leaves intact the “I–it” relation theorized by Martin Buber.112 The human element proves elusive in such encounters because they are based on exoticized notions rather than intimate connection. The only answer to these abortive attempts at relating is love. Thus, writes Baldwin: “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the world ‘love’ here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace—not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”113
Love allows people to form human relationships based not on racialized fantasies, but on common values that dwell behind the masks created by fear. And even when sociopolitical realties generate disagreement, the compassion and “grace” inherent in love will allow for the possibilities of constructive conversation and communion with one another.
While a powerful familial love served as a buffer between Baldwin and the world during his childhood, the young protagonist in Morrison’s The Bluest Eye endures racist treatment in a loveless world. Revealing the consequences of such deprivation, Morrison renders “an unforgettable and penetrating description of the racial deformation of Pecola Breedlove’s mind and body under the aesthetic regime of whiteness.”114 Similarly reflecting on the dangers of internalizing racist ideology, hooks asserts that, “[d]oing the work of love, we ensure our survival and our triumph over the forces of evil and destruction.”115 But Pecola, arguably, is powerless to do the work of “lov[ing] [her] black bod[y] in a white supremacist patriarchal culture.”116 Lacking in “healthy self-esteem,” which hooks identifies as “the heart of self-love,”117 Pecola has no role model to emulate. In the absence of a loving mother, attentive father, and supportive community, Pecola has been infected with the values of white supremacy to the extent that rather than fully inhabit her detested black body, she attempts to will herself to “disappear” by offering prayers to God and “squeez[ing] her eyes shut.”118 Her feelings of worthlessness pave the path to mental collapse. The Bluest Eye, therefore, remains one of the most tragically powerful representations of a black child struggling to navigate her way through the structures and lived experience of white supremacy. Illustrating the notion that the denial of love coexists with despair, the novel further serves as a stinging indictment of the white supremacist values antithetical to love, operating within both blacks and whites in America.
As many scholars have argued,119 Pecola’s father, Cholly Breedlove, himself wounded by racist and patriarchal oppression, fails to instill in his daughter a sense of unconditional love; he subsequently imposes on her his own perverted understanding of the concept. An obstacle to love, patriarchal structures disrupt the workings of the human heart. Based on her studies, hooks observes that “[p]atriarchal thinking certainly does not encourage men to be self-loving. Instead it encourages them to believe that power is more important than love, particularly the power to dominate and control others.”120 A wife-beating drunkard, Cholly provides a brutal and destabilizing environment for his wife and children. Although the reader is led to believe that he “loved” Pecola,121 his molestation of her bears out hooks’s argument that “Love and abuse cannot coexist.”122
Dehumanized by the environment which, in part, produces him, Cholly seems almost compelled to lash out violently at his daughter.123 While Morrison does not pardon his behavior,124 she does bring to light the societal conditions that helped to damage Cholly’s psyche. Abandoned by his mother when he was a child, terrorized by white men, and rejected by his own father as a youth, Cholly in truth does not know how to “return” his daughter’s love.125 Not only is he emotionally damaged, but his sense of self is further diminished by his limited access to socioeconomic power. This condition yields predictable results. As hooks observes, “Many men in our society have no status, no privilege; they receive no freely given compensation, no perks with capitalist patriarchy. For these men domination of women and children may be the only opportunity to assert a patriarchal presence.”126 As Cholly indeed “suffer[s]” in this manner,127 the behavior that follows (i.e., beating his wife and abusing his daughter), may produce for him a false sense of power, further alienating him from the possibility of cultivating love-based relationships. Cholly is indeed a victimizer, but he “victimize[s] from the location of victimization.”128
The complexity of Cholly’s desperate dilemma therefore begs the question: Under ideal conditions, how might love have intervened here? Venturing momentarily into the realm of the speculative, had Cholly learned to recognize himself as a loving and loveable being—as Baldwin advises his nephew to do—he might have grown into a very different person. Instead of learning to love during his childhood and young adulthood, Cholly internalized what hooks terms “the values of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.”129 Rather than learning how to fully process childhood insults, he frequently dwelt upon “myriad…humiliations, defeats, and emasculations” which “could stir him into flights of depravity.”130 Another salutary possibility is the development of a feminist consciousness. The “feminist thinking” that hooks endorses “offers strategies that enable [men] to challenge and change patriarchal masculinity.”131 Rightly so, she concludes that this shift in awareness could provide for men a “vision of liberatory masculinity.”132 Not only does she encourage individual men to develop new ways of thinking; but for meaningful change to occur, society in general must develop structures to facilitate the development of egalitarian sexual relations. This means that young boys, when wounded by childhood traumas, must, like females, also be “given cultural support for cultivating an interest in love” rather than rebellion, anger, and vindictiveness.133 Our media images as well as parental skills might also help to create popular images of loving men who seek to resolve conflict through communication rather than violence. But having been historically denied access to such resources and role models, hooks notes, “[m]any men in our culture never recover from childhood unkindnesses.”134 This being the case with deeply wounded Cholly, he unthinkingly lashes out, as a grown man, at those closest, and most vulnerable to him.
Thus far, this chapter has considered the power of love to intervene in the force of white supremacy, as well as the consequences of living a loveless existence. It also suggests that patriarchal forces must be vigorously challenged, for they work in conjunction with whiteness, in opposition to loving, nondominant relations. The concluding section of this chapter will reflect briefly on the biblical injunction to love one’s neighbor as oneself, exploring, in particular, the risks inherent in extending the self to another. In short, loving one another makes us vulnerable to each other. And this open hearted orientation invariably carries with it the risk of disappointment and betrayal. Consider, for example, Baby Suggs’s loving—yet grossly misconstrued generosity—toward her neighbors in Beloved. Her kindliness hardens, rather than opens, their hearts.
Twenty days after fugitive slave Sethe arrives at the home of her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, the latter’s gratitude for Underground Railroad agent, Stamp Paid, takes sudden and dramatic shape. Specifically, Suggs “had decided to do something with the fruit [gathered by Paid] worthy of the man’s labor and his love.”135 But this spontaneous expression of gratitude quickly assumes grand proportions:
She made the pastry dough and thought she ought to tell Ella and John to stop on by because three pies, maybe four, were too much to keep for one’s own. Sethe thought they might as well back it up with a couple of chickens. Stamp allowed that perch and catfish were jumping into the boat—didn’t even have to drop a line.…it grew to a feast for ninety people. 124 [Suggs’s home address] shook with their voices far into the night. Ninety people who ate so well, and laughed so much, it made them angry.136
Cleary, Suggs’s feast springs from her desire to express gratitude for Paid’s efforts on her relatives’ behalf (first his rescue of them, and later his porch presentation to them of two pails of blackberries, picked by his own hand). Rather than celebrating the arrival of Sethe in a private manner, thereby relegating her fortune to the realm of individual good, Suggs’s affection for her community prompts her to share with others the good that has literally been placed on her porch. Surely, the impulse to give thanks, and engage in altruistic activity, is an expression of love. Unfortunately for Suggs, her neighbors reject this loving-kindness, wondering: “ Where does she get it all, Baby Suggs, holy? Why is she and hers always the center of things? How come she always knows exactly what to do and when? Giving advice; passing messages; healing the sick, hiding fugitives, loving, cooking, cooking, loving, preaching, singing, dancing and loving everybody like it was her job and hers alone.”137
Instead of receiving the love that Suggs offers, the neighbors partake only of the food. They later find fault with her generosity, criticizing the former slave for lessening the burdens of the sick, and providing shelter for the homeless. Rather than being grateful for and inspired by Suggs’s “great heart,”138 they ascribe to the old woman “uncalled-for pride,”139 and meditate on her “reckless generosity.”140 The ironic results of Suggs’s kindness exemplify the potential consequences inherent in extending one’s self, on behalf of others: misunderstanding, projection, and punishment may result from acting on the impulses of the heart.
In Suggs’s case, the community members’ punishment manifests itself as their refusal to warn the former that slave catchers, in hopes of reclaiming their human “property,” are advancing on 124 Bluestone Road. Put another way, Suggs’s “friends and neighbors were angry at her because she had overstepped, given too much, offended them by excess.”141 Rather than rallying around Suggs, her women friends abandon her. They refuse to form around her what hooks might call a “circle of love”; and they fail to serve as “companions of her soul.”142 In Communion, hooks argues that a “negative, competitive impulse, which seeks the psychic annihilation and destruction of the other, the female who possesses what one lacks, often characterizes…general female interaction.”143 She further explains that “[a]ffirming another woman’s success is the difficult issue for many females,” and that young girls soon “learn how to use terroristic tactics of exclusion, ostracism, and shunning to police one another” when envy intervenes.144 Undergoing a similar fate, Suggs and Sethe are excluded from the protective mechanisms of the neighborhood, and thus rendered vulnerable to the encroaching slave catchers. Competitive, sexist thinking thus hinders the reciprocal expression of love between Suggs and her neighbors. Morrison’s passage serves as a useful reminder that both men and women men are capable of reproducing patriarchal belief systems that thwart love-based relationships rooted in “care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.”145
Lingering in the wake of Suggs’s dilemma, however, is the unanswered question: What does it mean to give too much? Love too much? Is there a point at which loving becomes unwise? These questions sparked by Morrison’s Beloved have implications for this chapter as a whole. While this chapter does not endeavor to provide a conclusive answer to these questions, it is worth noting that loving carries with it the possibility of pain. Despite the heartbreak in Beloved, love nonetheless emerges as victorious in the novel. Years after Suggs’s death, her granddaughter, Denver, is motivated by the memory of Suggs’s loving teachings to venture beyond home, to find work, and feed her family. Conversations with Suggs about resilience, forgiveness, and courage prompt Denver to reach out to her community, thereby breaching the divide between her family and neighbors. As the novel closes, Paul D urges Sethe to reawaken to the awareness that she is loveable, and worthy of love. In short, he gently encourages Sethe to remember that she, herself, is her own “best thing.”146 True enough, love alone “does not bring an end to difficulties.”147 But, as illustrated in Beloved, love provides the “strength to cope with difficulties in a constructive way.”148 Most everything can be improved by the presence of love. But “[e]ven when we cannot change ongoing exploitation and domination, love gives life meaning, purpose, and direction,”149 as hooks writes. Love, alone, may not provide the solution to all of society’s ills. But it surely creates the conditions that are conducive to meaningful change.
1. I extend sincere thanks to George Yancy and Lupe Davidson, whose support I deeply appreciate. Thanks also to Matthew Bachner and Beth Buhot, who assisted me during the source-gathering stage.
2. hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (Boston: South End Press, 1990), 12.
3. Ibid., 13.
4. Ibid.
5. Cornel West, “Conversation with bell hooks,” in The Cornel West Reader (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 544.
6. hooks, Salvation: Black People and Love (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 152.
7. hooks, All About Love: New Visions (New York: William Morrow, 2000), 87.
8. Ibid., 98.
9. Ibid..
10. Ibid., 99.
11. hooks, Salvation, xxiv.
12. Quoted in hooks, All About Love, 4, emphasis mine.
13. Ruth Smith, “Morality and Perceptions of Society: The Limits of Self-Interest,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 26, no. 3 (1987): 289.
14. Martin Luther King, Jr., “On Being a Good Neighbor.” In Strength to Love (Cleveland, Ohio: William Collins, 1963), 35.
15. George Yancy, “The Black Self within a Semiotic Space of Whiteness: Reflections on the Racial Deformation of Pecola Breedlove in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye” CLA, 43, no. 3 (2000): 302.
16. Here I paraphrase a point made by Dr. Reverend William S. Epps, Senior Pastor of the Second Baptist Church in Inglewood, California, on Sunday, July 15, 2007.
17. hooks, All About Love, 98.
18. Ibid., 5.
19. Peck, quoted in Ibid., 4.
20. Ibid., 219.
21. hooks, Salvation, 221.
22. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Loving Your Enemies,” in A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. Clayborne Carson and Peter Holloran (New York: Warner, 1998), 53–54.
23. hooks, Salvation, 220–221.
24. Ibid., 221.
25. Ibid., 212.
26. While hooks in no way approves of the fact that “black liberation was made synonymous with the creation of strong black patriarchs,” she does identify Huey Newton, Elaine Brown, and Stokely Carmichael as “leaders who took up the mantle of black self-determination,” hooks, Salvation, 9.
27. Peck quoted in hooks, All About Love, 4.
28. hooks, All About Love, 13.
29. hooks, Salvation, 54.
30. hooks, All About Love, 5.
31. Gates et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (New York: W.W .Norton, 2004), 544.
32. Ibid., 545–546.
33. Cara L. Peterson, “Commemorative Ceremonies and Invented Traditions: History, Memory, and Modernity in the ‘New Negro’ Novel of the Nadir,” in Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem: African American Literature and Culture, 1877-1999, ed. Barbara Mc Caskill and Caroline Gebhard (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 38.
34. Bakhtin cited in Peterson, “Commemorative Ceremonies and Invented Traditions,” 38.
35. Charles Chesnutt quoted in Stephen P. Knadler, “Untragic Mulatto: Charles Chesnutt and the Discourse of Whiteness,” American Literary History 8, no. 3 (1996), 428.
36. Quoted in Gates et al., The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, 678.
37. Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition (1901, repr., Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003), 33.
38. Ibid., 73.
39. Ibid., 72.
40. Ibid., 39–40.
41. Ibid., 42.
42. Ibid., 163.
43. Ibid., 44.
44. hooks, All About Love, 98.
45. Both Burns and Price admire Miller’s medical skill, but neither character in the novel demonstrates toward him the love that manifests itself in the desire for justice. In economic terms, rather than act against their own “investment in whiteness,” these ostensibly well-meaning men uphold the “system for protecting the privileges of whites by denying communities of color opportunities for asset accumulation and upward mobility.” See George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), viii.
46. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition, 46.
47. Peterson, “Commemorative Ceremonies and Invented Traditions,” 42.
48. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition, 46, emphasis mine.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., 47.
51. hooks, All About Love, 214.
52. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition, 47.
53. Robert Birt, “The Bad Faith of Whiteness,” in What White Looks Like: African-American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question, ed. George Yancy (New York: Routledge, 2004), 58.
54. Birt, “The Bad Faith of Whiteness,” 57.
55. hooks, All About Love, 142.
56. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition, 41.The feeling is mutual: Miller, likewise, considers Price to be his “friend.” See also ibid., 33.
57. Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, vii.
58. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition, 48.
59. Birt, “The Bad Faith of Whiteness,” 58.
60. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition, 49.
61. Ibid., 48.
62. Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, 1.
63. Knadler, “Untragic Mulatto,” 429.
64. Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, 4.
65. W. E. B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (1935; repr., New York: Free Press, 1998), 700.
66. Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), 4.
67. hooks, Salvation, 91.
68. hooks, All About Love, 220–221.
69. Sojourner Truth, “First Annual Meeting of the American Equal Rights Association (First Speech),” In Sojourner Truth as Orator: Wit, Story, and Song, eds. Suzanne P. Fitch and Roseann M. Mandziuk (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997), 121.
70. I thank scholar Andrea Williams for encouraging me to pursue this point.
71. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition, 205.
72. Ibid., 46.
73. Ibid., 207.
74. Ibid., 205.
75. Ibid.
76. Pope John Paul, “Apostolic Letter of John Paul II: On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering,” in Salvifici Doloris (Boston: Pauline Books, 1984), 54–55, original emphasis.
77. Pope John Paul, “On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering,” 49–50, original emphasis.
78. hooks, Salvation, xvii.
79. hooks, All About Love, 94.
80. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition, 210.
81. Pope John Paul, “On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering,” 49, original emphasis.
82. Ibid., 49.
83. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition, 230, 212.
84. Knadler, “Untragic Mulatto,” 443.
85. Ibid., 443.
86. Ibid., 167.
87. Lewis B. Smedes, The Art of Forgiving: When You Need to Forgive and Don’t Know How (New York: Ballantine Books 1996), 7–10.
88. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition, 212–213.
89. W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903; repr., New York: Penguin, 1996 ), 35.
90. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963; repr., New York: Vintage, 1993 []), 105.
91. hooks, Salvation, 55.
92. Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 4.
93. Ibid.
94. Ibid., 7.
95. Ibid., 9.
96. hooks, Salvation, 66.
97. Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 8.
98. Ibid., 96.
99. Lawrie Balfour, “Finding the Words: Baldwin, Race Consciousness, and Democratic Theory,” in James Baldwin Now, ed. Dwight McBride (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 89.
100. Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 10.
101. Ibid., 96.
102. Maria Lugones, “Playfulness, ‘World’-Travelling, and Loving Perception,” Hypatia 2, no. 2 (1987): 16.
103. Ibid., 11.
104. Ibid., 15.
105. Ibid.
106. Ibid.
107. Ibid., 16.
108. Ibid.
109. Ibid.
110. Ibid.
111. Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 96.
112. See Martin Buber (1996).
113. Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 95.
114. Yancy, “The Black Self within a Semiotic Space of Whiteness,” 300.
115. Ibid., xxiv.
116. Ibid., 89.
117. Ibid., 86,
118. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (1970; repr., New York: Vintage, 2007), 45.
119. See Jerome Bump, “Family Systems Therapy and Narrative in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” In John V Knapp and Kenneth Womack, eds., Reading the Family Dance: Family Systems Therapy and Literary Study (Newark: Univ. of Delaware Press,2003), 151–170; and Jane S. Bakerman, “Failures of Love: Female Initiation in the Novels of Toni Morrison.” American Literature, 52, no. 4 (1981).
120. hooks, Salvation, 145.
121. Morrison, The Bluest Eye, 206.
122. hooks, All About Love, 6.
123. Cormier-Hamilton argues that, “like many early naturalistic protagonists, he is driven by an inner force almost against his desires.” See Cormier-Hamilton, “Black Naturalism and Toni Morrison: The Journey Away from Self-Love in The Bluest Eye.” MELUS 19, no. 4 (1994): 119.
124. Ibid., 119.
125. Morrison, The Bluest Eye, 161.
126. hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (New York: Atria, 2004), 138.
127. Ibid., 138.
128. Ibid., 139.
129. hooks, Salvation, 152.
130. Morrison, The Bluest Eye, 42–43.
131. hooks, Salvation, 146.
132. hooks, All About Love, 146.
133. Ibid., 153.
134. Ibid., 23.
135. Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987; repr., New York: Penguin, 1998), 136.
136, Ibid., 136.
137. Ibid., 137.
138. Ibid., 87.
139. Ibid., 137.
140. Ibid., 137.
141. Ibid., 138.
142. Ibid., 230.
143. hooks, Communion: The Female Search for Love (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 124.
144. Ibid., 130. Here, hooks writes in particular about girls, and later women, who feel that they must compete with other females to be recognized as valuable “in the eyes of patriarchy” (131). Hence, these females have imbibed “sexist notions of womanhood” (128).
145. hooks, All About Love, 5.
146. Morrison, Beloved, 273.
147. hooks, Salvation, xvii.
148. Ibid., xvii.
149. Ibid., xxiv.