Mikki Kendall Remembers the Indelible Work and Full Complexity of bell hooks https://lithub.com/mikki-kendall-remembers-the-indelible-work-and-full-complexity-of-bell-hooks/
When hooks wrote about power and how power relations are built into how we perceive one another; her work validated my personal belief that not looking away, being confrontational, rebelling against demands of being ladylike isn’t falling into the stereotype of being an Angry Black Woman, it is instead a way to short-circuit the power dynamics that seek to force women into perpetual subservience.
Rejecting the idea that progressive social movements could function in isolation, she tied together feminism, civil rights, and even economics into all her conversations. thought process is integral to her definition of feminism, as “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.”
hooks regularly challenged Black culture to not just reinvent itself in the face of outside oppressors, but to consider what was being built and how it would impact the future. Though she did not always agree with the focus of other Black icons, she largely centered her critiques on impact, challenging thought leaders and artists to consider their sometimes outsized impact in a society that tried to limit Black creativity to what would be palatable to white audiences. Creating for more than the white gaze or the male gaze was the goal.