a visit with bell

Ok, so this is a picture of the kids and me in bell hooks living room. When I shared this little tidbit on social media, a friend texted me, "Josina, what kind of life are you living???? bell hooks? omg." So, yeah, about a year ago I got this really clear vision that I would need to leave my work at the intentional community where we were living so that I could be faithful and focused on this calling of writing. And this year has been full of travel, writing and doors swinging open wide and blessings pouring out.  If you want the long story of how I ended up in bell hooks' living room read the next few paragraphs.  If you just want a summary of our visit, scroll down to just below the photo of the waterfall.  Thanks for reading and I hope you get inspired to live the life you were made to live.

I went to two summer writing workshops at the Collegeville Institute in Minnesota and each time I have been assigned a roommate.  As someone who loves family and community but also gets hungry for solitude and a "room of her own" I am glad to say that both roommates were wonderful. In 2014 my first roommate, Paige, and I shared an apartment for five days and we bonded over many things including a mutual love for Appalachia. I loved her writing about the psychological pain of mountaintop removal and the complicated dysfunctional relationship between people and coal. My parents have actively resisted fracking and strip mining in their rural Ohio village, so I introduced them to Paige.  Our families have stayed in touch and visited back an forth in each other's homes.  This summer, Paige met up with me and my kids for a day in Berea, Kentucky so that she could introduce me to her longtime friend bell hooks. (If you aren't familiar with bell hooks, that's ok I still love you, but, please read her stuff. She's a major influence on me and so many others so this was, like, my fangirl moment, and I was trying to keep my cool)

Paige Billman and me at Anglin Falls in Berea, Kentucky

bone black is one of those memoirs that lingers and makes you want to write only the pithiest of memories.  I have only scratched the surface of her work, but hooks' writing resonates with me on so many levels.  After living in New York City and California, she has decided to root herself back in rural Kentucky, near the place of her birth.  In her writing, she challenges the many fears and stereotypes about poor white people as much as she challenges hate, fear and ongoing violence against black and other oppressed people. She is able to articulate the ways that white supremacy and male dominance have made many of us complicit in maintaining segregation and imbalance in our relationships and communities.

Here's an excerpt from her most recent book belonging: a culture of place
"When black folks no longer suffer from internalized racism, we know that we can love blackness and embrace racial integration, that cultural allegiance need not blind us to the need to recognize and live beyond the artificial boundaries set by racist notions of race."

I decided not to come with any grand expectations for our visit to her home.  Paige said that bell is the kind of person who will tell you just what she is thinking, so there was no way to predict how the afternoon might go especially with my ragtag bunch of kids ranging in age from 8-15 years old. With her permission, I offer this little sketch of our brief and lovely visit.  The dialogue below doesn't contain exact quotes, just snippets of the conversation as I remember it:

"...see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you 

and pour down for you an overflowing blessing."

 Malachi 3:10 Anglin Falls, Berea, KY

“Welcome! Who are all you beautiful people?” she asked as we stood at her front door, damp and dirty, from our hike up to Anglin Falls that morning.  My kids and I tumbled into her home.  First, she got our names.  “Zora, wonderful! I love that name. Malachi! My favorite Bible verse is in the book of Malachi ‘see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing.’ Seraphina? Beautiful. Phoebe, so good to meet you.” I think I told her my name too but it was clear that this was not going to be a grown-up conversation with the kids keeping quiet.  “You know, my name isn’t really bell, it’s Gloria.” Then she stuck out her tongue and made a funny face.

“Gloria is a beautiful name!” the kids proclaimed.

“No, it's not, it’s a yucky name,” she insisted.

I love being with adults that value kids as people and draw them directly into the conversation.  I have so many painful memories of lovely summer days spent inside visiting my Nana’s friends in their carefully decorated homes and feeling as though my hands and clothes were never clean enough and being told, “Don’t touch! Don’t talk! Children are to be seen and not heard.” I had to call them “Miss so and so" and I always had to give them some sugar, planting awkward kisses on strange perfumed and powdered cheeks. 

All of that anxiety faded away as bell looked at Zora and said, “So tell me, Zora, are you the sane one in this family? What are your passions?”

Zora told her that she wants to be a surgeon.  Immediately she recommended a book for her about a poor white boy that became a neurosurgeon. He was from a dysfunctional family and had no vision for his life, one day he walked into a magic shop and it changed his life.  But she couldn’t remember the name of the book. “Sh1t, F#ck! What’s the name of that book?”  My kids all giggled.  I had told them before we arrived to be careful how they spoke around her.  

She turned to Paige and asked her to look it up on her phone.  “What is the name of that book?” Paige had been bell’s personal assistant when she was a student at Berea College and she naturally fell into that role again. After some searching, she found it, Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart. “Yes, that’s it.  You need to read that book, Zora.”

“Didn’t you write some books?” Seraphina asked.

“Yeah, I’ve written 34.  But I’m not doing anything right now except reading mysteries, I’m a slug right now. I love writing children's books have you read Be Boy Buzz? That was my favorite”  We have read Skin I'm In but not that one, not yet.

“You wrote 34 books, so are you rich and famous?” Malachi wanted to know.

“Oh, it’s so strange to be famous.  Did you know that people have T-Shirts with my face on it?  I don’t even wear T-Shirts.  People are walking around with my face on their T-Shirts.  And as for being rich, I bought real estate so all my wealth is in homes so people will stop asking me for money. Have you been to Martha’s Vineyard?  It’s the oldest African American beach community. It’s beautiful, the beach and black people. I love it there.  You should go.”

Paige told bell that Malachi had just gotten back from a trip to Thailand. 

“Oh I bet you fit right in, you look like you could Thai." Except that he's nearly 6'2. "So, do white people think that you’re white?” she asks Malachi. 

He said, “Yes.”

“And, what do you say that you are?” 

“I’m mixed.”

Then she asked me the question that I’m so used to answering.  “Are all four of these lovely  kids from the same man?” 

I said, “yes.” I didn’t tell her that I had just written a piece that week for the Mudroom about the colors of our children. (I’ll print up a copy and mail it to her because she hates the internet and avoids it as much as possible- when she needs to she just asks folks to google things for her)

Then she asked about their dad, “So, where is he? What’s he doing? Is he white?”

“Yes, he’s a welder, he’s at home working, building Zora a bed, building our chickens a new house, caring for our puppy. He’s a good man, a good husband and a good papa to this crew. Yes, he's white”

“Well, it doesn't matter that he's white.  What matters is that he's loving.”

“Can you be my other mom?” Zora asked.

“Absolutely, I always wanted a daughter, I’ll take you.”

Zora and bell

The conversation went on quite comfortably like this for about an hour with questions bouncing equally between bell, Paige, the four kids and me. We talked about Buddhism, mangoes, Walmart, marriage.  At some point, I mentioned that I went to a reading that she gave nearly twenty years earlier at the Free Library of Philadelphia and I waited in line for her to sign my copy of all about love and that I brought along the man that was to become my husband.  I didn’t tell her that her writing was one of the things that gave me the courage to write, the courage to keep on loving and believing in love in a world full of hate.  “I knew I had met you somewhere, I just couldn’t remember.

“Too bad you didn’t bring me any junk food I would have let you stay longer but I'm getting tired.” The kids dashed to the car and brought an offering of packaged chips and cookies.

“What’s your favorite candy?” Phoebe asked.

“Gummy bears and jelly beans, I love jelly beans.”

The kids were allowed to try on her masks and she consented to selfies.  

She gave Paige the key to the gate of her beautiful house in the hills with the writing cabin and artist studio.  I wanted to talk more about why she was selling it, but it was time to go.  We drove seven miles up a country road and parked in the driveway of the house that she describes in belonging: a culture of place. We peeked in the windows, sat on the porch, Seraphina found a turtle and Paige found fossils. The kids' feet got muddy again and we dropped a shoe somewhere in those lovely Kentucky hills.

Seraphina with muddy feet and a turtle

this is the separate art studio

 Seraphina and the turtle

the little writing cabin

  

If we hadn’t just moved to my dream house in Georgia, and if we had more money, I’d be tempted to buy that house in the hills outside of Berea. It's a lovely town with a lovely history of working toward becoming beloved community. It was founded in the 1800's as an interracial, coed institution based on the Christian principle that we all come from "one blood." Post Civil War American Apartheid tried to dismantle that vision and forced segregation for a period of time.  Berea recovered and still serves low-income white, black and brown students from the Appalachian region and international students.  Every student receives a scholarship and has to work with their hands in addition to rigorous academic work.  Zora says she would like to apply and unless I get the book deal of my dreams in the next five years, we will probably still qualify as low income. 

In June of 1978, my mom was four months pregnant with me when she stopped through Berea, which is also her Alma mater.  My dad had gotten a job with the Federation for Southern Farmers Cooperative in rural Alabama and had gone ahead and movers had brought most of their stuff. The only thing left was for my pregnant Mom to drive with my 2-year-old sister and almost 5-year-old brother from their home in Doylestown, PA to their new and short-lived life as an interracial family down South. She had spent one night at her parents’ home in Barnesville, the next to catch up with friends in Berea and the next night they arrived in their trailer in York, Alabama.  Later they moved again to another trailer in Epes, Alabama, where I was born that November.  Even though I only went there when I was in utero, something about being in Berea felt so familiar, like I was coming there again for the first time.  

I wanted to talk with bell about so many things like being a black person called to rural living, about loving my neighbors, and intergenerational healing and soul memory and how to finish even just one book.  But it was also so good to feel relaxed and like we had a good time together. She said we can come again and come to an event at her institute, and next time, we will bring jelly beans.