bell hooks and the Power of Compassion

How has compassion supported transformation in your life? In February’s “We Conspire” series, we reflect on compassion through the life and work of bell hooks, a Buddhist Christian writer who advocated for a love ethic informed by faith and activism. Drawing from the wisdom of Thích Nhất Hạnh and Martin Luther King Jr., hooks championed compassion as a guiding force for healing, justice, and solidarity. 

Born Gloria Watkins in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, bell hooks took on her great-grandmother Bell Blair Hooks’s name as a way of honoring her ancestor. Never capitalizing her chosen name, bell hooks sought to focus her work away from herself and toward a larger message of love, justice, and liberation. “When the name of bell hooks is called, the spirit of my great-grandmother rises,” hooks said. [1] 

Author of nearly forty books, hooks used her incisive intellect to write about interconnected oppressions such as race, gender, and class—and her spiritual practice served as her foundation. hooks affirmed the quality of divine presence that sustained her vocation: “Writing has been for me one of the ways to encounter the divine.” [2] Describing herself as a Buddhist Christian, she found inspiration to live a life of loving kindness and compassion from both Martin Luther King Jr. and the Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh. hooks’s upbringing in the Baptist church first stirred her faith, but Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent Christian witness shaped her understanding over time: “what Martin Luther King wants me to do today is go out in the world and in every way that I can, small and large, build a beloved community.” [3]  

In her book, “Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood,” hooks chronicled the loneliness and pain of being silenced and alienated in her family. Struggling to find her young voice, select adults offered her the compassion that nurtured hooks’s creativity and confidence. hooks’s maternal grandfather Daddy Gus was a peaceful and kind man who witnessed young bell’s suffering and loved her. hooks also writes about Miss Erma, one of the founders of hooks’s childhood church, who bolstered her confidence. hooks remembered her as “older than we can imagine” [4] and as praising God with effusive shouts. When young bell read scripture in church, Miss Erma said her reading touched the heart. She affirmed bell that the “god voice that came out of me and touched her beating heart would go on speaking and name itself in the world.” [5]  

Years later, bell hooks pondered the kindness of such individuals amid the pain she experienced in her family. She asked, “Who could I have been had I been loved in that way?” [6] This reflection allowed her to confront her grief, work through it, and heal. hooks spoke of receiving compassion, recalling how elders in church talked to her as “if they understood one another, as if they were the same—nothing standing between them, not age, not sex.” [7] For hooks, the humility and attentive listening of these exchanges stood in stark contrast to the violence and domination prevalent in her home. Such caring and responsible interpersonal relationships demonstrated Christlike compassion to Gloria when she most needed it.  

While she did not speak about Buddhism’s impact on her until later in life, bell hooks first encountered Buddhism through meeting nuns while in college. The socially engaged Buddhism of Thích Nhất Hạnh introduced her to someone who, like Martin Luther King Jr. in her Christian faith, combined a profound union of spiritual practice and political activism. She spent her career healing from her upbringing and teaching others to heal alongside her, combining psychology, mysticism, and social action to encourage transformation. hooks built her work on a foundation of loving-kindness, believing in the power of love to heal brokenness. She believed love to be a powerful expression of compassion for people suffering marginalization: “Only love could defeat the intersecting forms of oppression that targeted women, children, people of color, the poor, and the otherwise marginalized.” [7] 

The devout, nonviolent figures of Nhất Hạnh and King exemplified how to pair social action with spirituality. hooks viewed love similar to contemplative practice, both an intention and an action, and she centered love’s transforming possibilities in her writings. She championed love as a remedy for the world’s social problems and believed the world could be improved with more love and less domination. In the final moments of her life, a chant recorded by Buddhist monks under the guidance of Thích Nhất Hạnh offered her comfort. Lecturer and friend of hooks Beth Eagan explains that the chant, entitled “Namo Avalokiteshvara,” unites suffering with compassion. She says, “By connecting with our suffering, the suffering of our ancestors, and the world’s suffering, we can open our hearts to love and compassion. [8] 

References: 
[1] As quoted in “Introduction,” Critical Perspectives on bell hooks, Ed. Maria del Guadalupe Davidson and George Yancy (Routledge, 2009), 4. 

[2] bell hooks, “When the Spirit Moves You,” Lion’s Roar, March 1, 1998. Accessed February 10, 2025.  

[3] George Yancy and bell hooks, “bell hooks: the Beats and Loving Blackness,” The New York Times Opinionator, December 10, 2015. Accessed February 10, 2025.  

[4] bell hooks, Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood (Henry Holt & Co., 1996), 44. 

[5] hooks, Bone Black, 45. 

[6] Nadra Nittle, bell hooks’ Spiritual Vision (Fortress Press, 2023), 126. 

[6] hooks, Bone Black, 64. 

[7] Nittle, bell hooks’ Spiritual Vision, 3. 

[8] Beth Feagan, “bell hooks Lives On,” Appalachian Places, April 5, 2022. Accessed February 1, 2025. 

Reflect with Us 
We invite you to consider the ways compassion has supported transformation in your life. In what ways has compassion been a guiding force for healing, justice, and solidarity? Share your reflection with us. 

We Conspire is a series from the Center for Action and Contemplation featuring wisdom and stories from the growing Christian contemplative movement. Sign up for the monthly email series and receive a free invitation to practice each month.