00:00:07.380I came to this coven because nobody else was centering mutual aid and informed resistance like the Missing Witches.
00:00:13.100But this community is also hugely loving and supportive and full of artists and thinkers and healers who have such a huge diversity of experience.
00:00:22.100Even when we're not in circle, there's magic afoot.
00:00:25.100Also, I have a chronic illness, which makes it really hard not to swear all the time.
00:01:36.040I just dragged a rubber pipe off the mountain that I found up there while I was on a hike.
00:01:44.140I've been sick for a week and the asthma is a pressure on me and it sort of feels like the sorrows of the world are symbolized by the rubber pipe I dragged out of the mountains today.
00:01:54.880but I'm so excited I feel like when we get to have a guest come back on the podcast
00:02:01.720it's a sign that we're doing something right that they're willing to come back and talk to us again
00:02:06.960and I love Nadra Niddle's writing and research so much I think it's such a gift the work that
00:02:14.980you do the incredibly thorough work that you do to position these luminaries into their context
00:02:21.000and so I'm just thrilled that you're here. It's fun to get to talk again about your writing and
00:02:28.840your work. I wondered if you could start, maybe do your reintroduction for the folks who didn't
00:02:35.120meet you last time when you came to talk about Toni Morrison and your book. And also I'm so
00:02:41.140curious about this idea. Now you have two books about spiritual visions. I wonder about that
00:02:48.440project for you. We can talk more about it. Hi and welcome back. Thank you. Thanks for having me
00:02:55.280and thanks for your kind words. I really appreciate it and for having me back. So yes, I've written
00:03:02.960two books about two different Black women's spiritual vision. So the first one was Toni
00:03:09.600Morrison's spiritual vision. And this one is on bell hooks, spiritual vision. So the late
00:03:17.360feminist scholar, cultural critic bell hooks, who sadly died about two years ago, it'll be two years
00:03:25.480ago in December. And I got started on this project because a magazine editor reached out to me and
00:03:33.960asked me if I would be willing to write about spirituality in Toni Morrison's books. That year
00:03:40.820it was the 30th anniversary of Beloved and the 40th anniversary of Song of Solomon. And so in
00:03:50.440light of those anniversaries, they asked me to look at spirituality in those books and in Toni
00:03:57.080Morrison's life. Well, I think about two years after that, a publisher, Fortress Press, reached
00:04:04.120out to me and asked if I would be willing to write a whole book about Toni Morrison's spiritual
00:04:08.680vision. And after that book came out two years ago, they wanted to know if I wanted to do a
00:04:15.780follow-up. And they had some suggestions of various men, but I wanted to do another woman.
00:04:23.360And Bell Hooks had just died, and I thought she would be a good person because I knew
00:04:29.260that she was a Buddhist, and that played a big part in her work.
00:12:34.420she was around in the 1300s and she's believed to be the first woman to have written a book
00:12:40.180in English. And in that book, which is, which is a Christian book, she talks about God as being,
00:12:48.200you know, our mother instead of our father. And so when Bellix read that, I think she might've
00:12:54.580read that for the first time as a teenager or just, you know, very young woman. And she was
00:13:00.040really moved you know to hear God referenced as a mother as opposed to a father which is what she
00:13:07.440had grown up with so and it's not and I think in addition to just like looking at Christianity
00:13:13.400through the lens of the oppressed whether it's women whether it's black women you know it could0.82
00:13:19.080be Latinas children there's child liberation theology which I write about and there's queer
00:13:25.640liberation theology um so it's a way for oppressed people really to see themselves in christianity
00:13:32.440but it also is saying i think what bell hooks did which is that christianity needs to serve to
00:13:41.640liberate the oppressed so if you're a christian that should be part of your faith is it's helping
00:13:49.700other people get free essentially and i forgot to mention i guess one of the biggest liberation
00:13:55.400theology which is catholic liberation theology and that played a role you know people were using
00:14:01.420that like in latin america and revolutions and different countries so yeah it's it's a pretty
00:14:08.740serious look at like basically saying you have to you have to fight you have to fight to get
00:14:15.440other people free it's not enough just to have faith i find really like i don't know reassuring
00:14:22.400and electric that that it was not just okay we'll find our way through christianity not just through
00:14:29.860this particular paradigm and set of rules that will just like concede the ground like this is
00:14:35.560the true access to god but i can find liberation through this but also to say it's not just this
00:14:42.980one path like she said she wanted people and especially black women to have all the paths
00:14:48.780that you could have Buddhism, you could have paganism, you could have animism. Can you talk
00:14:54.280more about how she reconciled these really different worldviews or she did? Yeah, I mean,
00:15:00.680I think she was just kind of a maverick and she just kind of, you know, defined the rules really
00:15:07.320early on. Because I think now in the 21st century, you have lots of people kind of doing what she
00:15:13.160recommended. I think she mentioned this in a book that came out in the 90s, you know, and now we have
00:15:19.040people saying, I'm a Christian witch, I'm a Jewish witch, you know, like just mixing things together
00:15:24.740and that's fine. But I think 30 years ago, that wasn't so fine. And I think even today, if you0.76
00:15:30.840were to say, you know, I'm a Christian witch, some people might, you know, be offended by that.0.88
00:15:37.080But right now, we're in this moment where the Pew Research Center does say the fastest group of people, they identify as spiritual and not religious.
00:15:48.520And so people are kind of defining religion on their own terms.
00:16:51.180And I think she thought for Black women to heal,
00:16:53.500They had to engage spirituality and not patriarchal or fundamentalist Christianity, but, you know, a healing spirituality. And if that meant someone thought, hey, you know, I think Judaism is healing for me, that that was fine.
00:17:13.360She didn't want people to be boxed in, and she didn't box in herself.
00:17:18.420So I think that was really radical.0.88
00:24:50.340I mean, she was afraid of having her works excavated is the word that her friend used and just kind of being forgotten about, like having her ideas being used by other people who are exploited, but having she herself, you know, just forgotten about.
00:25:08.300But one of the things she did in life to prevent that from happening is she created the Bell Hook Center at Berea College in her native Kentucky.
00:25:18.920So that's one way that she's remembered.
00:25:21.820I think she wrote so much that she is not going to be forgotten.
00:25:26.820She wrote three dozen books and she's touched so many people.
00:25:30.800I think the other reason she remains really popular is because of her book, All About Love, which before she died, she wrote it in 2000 or it was published in 2000, but it continues to be one of her bestselling books.
00:25:45.800And it appeared on the New York Times bestseller list the year that she died.
00:25:51.280And I think that book, you see people from all like ages, all backgrounds, different
00:25:57.200professions, you know, models, writers, poets, filmmakers.
00:26:01.880Like I talk about how Sofia Coppola said that book was a huge influence on her.
00:26:08.760People you wouldn't think about are huge fans of that All About Love book.
00:26:13.120I think she she had such range. And I think that is going to make her relevant for years to come.
00:26:21.340Can you talk more about what she teaches us about love?
00:26:26.500Yes. So what she teaches us about love, one major thing is that, you know, love is not a feeling.
00:26:35.740love is an absent just how she believes spirituality right you you had to work you
00:26:42.720know for your own personal liberation and to liberate other people she believed that love
00:26:47.800was essentially someone working towards their own spiritual growth or another person's spiritual
00:26:55.440growth and she got that concept from m scott peck who wrote the road less traveled in the 1970s
00:27:03.100that's how he defined love and when she saw that that definition of love really resonated with her
00:27:09.500she believed that there was too much emphasis on romantic love she also really challenged
00:27:17.840parent-child relationships as well you know she didn't believe that her father loved her and i
00:27:26.120should say we haven't mentioned it yet but i i met bell hooks once so when i was a teenager bell
00:27:31.660came to my school and I met her. And I remember this is one of the things that she talked about
00:27:36.760is that not feeling that her father loved her. She also wrote about it in her books and in essays.
00:27:43.720But I think that's really taboo, right? To say, you know, my parents, they don't love me. She
00:27:50.240was willing to go there and she was willing to get people to really think about it. Did your parents
00:27:56.640actually love you they may have cared for you in certain ways but does it really fit
00:28:02.540the definition of love being someone who prioritized your spiritual growth is that
00:28:10.000what your parents did for you and she also talks about friends as well and the importance of
00:28:16.020friendships and chosen family and how she had grown up to put romantic relationships above
00:28:24.800friendships and she ended up in an abusive relationship for years and one of the reasons
00:28:31.300she said she found it hard to leave is because she didn't really have any friends anymore
00:28:37.980because she had valued her romantic relationship over her friendships and it made it that much
00:28:43.620harder to leave and after she got out of that relationship um she never did that again and
00:28:50.380that was that's one of the things she talks about in all about love is that well love may take
00:28:55.380different forms depending on if it's like parent child romantic partner or friendship it's all
00:29:03.360equal it doesn't become less because it's a friend instead of a partner for example so I think
00:29:10.520that's one of the reasons the book resonated I know the novelist Emily St. John Mandel who wrote
00:29:17.820Station Eleven said that that book made her think differently about friendships.
00:29:23.120So I think that's also, you know, really radical.
00:29:26.760We don't think about, okay, my husband and my friends should be equal in my life.
00:29:33.720I think for many people that that was a radical concept.
00:29:36.840I think she was ahead of the curve being willing to go there over 20 years ago.
00:29:45.620I can feel so enraged the way the world is right now, you know, like I can feel like I want to be Beyonce with the baseball bat, like so many, you know, so many things make me so angry.
00:29:57.680And I connected so much with philosophies of nonviolence when I was a kid, like that just made everything make sense to me.
00:30:05.920I was not really a Christian anymore, but like those people who really put nonviolence at the
00:30:13.820heart of their work, I was like, okay, I understand everything. Everything makes sense if people are
00:30:21.220saying that this is what we have to do. But it's so hard to keep coming back to when you feel so
00:30:26.340angry at the injustice of the world. But how does centering a definition of a love that is
00:30:34.160helping another person achieve their spiritual growth or spiritual vision how does that get us
00:30:41.920there do you know what i mean like how does that help save the world like how does how does a
00:30:47.380version of love that is helping us have spiritual growth become the type of love that that helps us
00:30:54.540when the world is monstrously unjust yeah i think i mean and that's a hard question but i think
00:31:02.980You know, as a Buddhist, and one of the goals, maybe the major goal of Buddhism is to liberate oneself, right? To reach enlightenment. If we have more people, you know, reaching enlightenment or really trying to work as hard as possible to get there, whether that's through prayer and meditation, reflecting and pondering life.
00:31:27.960hopefully we have fewer people acting out in unjust ways. I think that's one of the ways I
00:31:36.260think spiritual growth can help people that can hopefully counteract how many people are hurting
00:31:43.160and acting out in ways that are either self-destructive or destructive to other people
00:31:50.420or to our environment, society as a whole. I think it also gives people hope. Like you mentioned,
00:31:57.280Bell Hooks was a professor at an Ivy League institution and she was so shocked that so many
00:32:03.360of her students who she thought, you know, they were young and beautiful and gifted and so many
00:32:08.240of them were in pain. They come to her office and she find out how depressed and hopeless
00:32:13.900some of these students felt. And I think she shared her spiritual faith with them to give
00:32:22.220those students hope, to help them think about the ancestors or the universe or, you know, just
00:32:29.740something outside of our immediate circumstances. She thought that that was a way to give people
00:32:36.200hope. She struggled with depression and suicidal ideation, but she still turned to Buddhism and
00:32:45.560Christianity. She had different Buddha statues and other religious figures in her home as a way
00:32:52.560to help her believe that there was something else, that there was something bigger. She believed her
00:32:59.480great aunt and not just her, I guess the community believed this great aunt had a lot of spiritual
00:33:04.460power and that through that spiritual power that they could kind of transcend white supremacy.
00:33:11.460They could transcend injustice. There was a way to tap into something greater. Patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, that by tapping into our spiritual gifts, that was a way to overcome.
00:33:26.300And nature, too. She talks about her grandmother and other relatives gardening and growing food and being self-sufficient. And that white supremacy may have kept Black people down in different ways, but they could not fully dominate nature.
00:33:45.600That was one thing where all humanity was kind of equal.
00:33:49.980So her seeing relatives, you know, who could grow, who could sustain themselves without
00:33:56.000buying things, for example, that that was a way to do that.
00:38:41.460Like I had to remind myself, she had actually passed away.
00:38:45.320In some ways, her spirit just felt very alive when I was writing the book.
00:38:49.740And the one thing that I was really touched by is that, so there are five people who endorsed
00:38:55.980the book and three of those people actually knew bell hooks. Like really, like one was there
00:39:02.580singing when I mentioned people singing gospel songs to her. One of them who endorsed it was
00:39:08.180one of those people. And so it made me feel like, you know, those three people doing it was short
00:39:14.360of like having bell hooks herself kind of you know endorse this book there's so much to learn
00:39:20.360from her in terms of her critiques of of capitalism i'm i'm not a buddhist but i also
00:39:26.780think like writing the book has made me more interested in buddhism yeah she's so ahead of
00:39:34.400her time too in insisting on looking at the interconnectedness of oppression you know i think
00:39:40.880we get that phrase from her like imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy like
00:39:47.200let's acknowledge how all of these things form a web of oppression that pushes on us in so many
00:39:55.760layered ways that just pulling out one aspect of that can mean that we miss some of the complexities
00:40:01.960of oppression i that's something i'm really thankful to her for because we need to be able
00:40:08.240to see it in all its dimensions, I think, to talk about it. Yes, yes. And thinking about that term,
00:40:15.640it also turns like intersectionality. So I'm an education reporter. That's my nine to five job.
00:40:22.260But Bell Hooks, her books, Kimberly Crenshaw's books, they've been targets of book bans in
00:40:28.600Florida and other places. And so, you know, imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist,
00:40:34.500This patriarchy, you know, that phrase itself is apparently, you know, a threat that people want, you know, to wipe out or don't want young people to know about it.
00:40:44.980This year, that's been kind of disturbing to know that her works have been targeted in that way.
00:40:51.560Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of such a strange tension between like the joy at her being on the top of the New York Times list 20 years after writing a book.
00:41:02.080And also, you know, the the more the more we celebrate how important and visionary she was, the more that fascists are motivated to try to make sure we don't have access to her.
00:41:14.620Yeah. Yeah. And again, this is something she also predicted, really. She talked about that in Homegrown, which I think was published in 2006. She talked about book banning and affirmative action in like all these things that we've seen this year. She was concerned about them so long ago.
00:41:34.320she knew what do you think what do you think she would want us to walk away with today like
00:41:41.240not armed with because the language of violence isn't quite correct in this case but
00:41:46.960what do you think she would want us to walk away with rooted in or lifted up by
00:41:52.940i think the idea that we can create our own spirituality i think there are so many people
00:42:01.300who are doing this now but i think there's still people who are kind of you know afraid to practice
00:42:08.180syncretism in some way so whether that's like hey i'm a christian but i'm also gonna honor
00:42:14.180my ancestral practices there's still a lot of fear around people you know doing that but i think she
00:42:22.520would want people to feel that they can practice their spirituality in whatever way most benefited
00:42:34.420them and in whatever way they felt healed them um because i think her writing her spirituality
00:42:44.280it was essentially about healing and so when she talks about a liberatory spirituality or love as
00:42:52.300liberation i think healing is her goal whatever heals you is the faith path you should follow
00:42:59.880i love that and i'm gonna keep to and and be loud about the idea that like
00:43:07.020to love something is also to tell the truth about what isn't right in it to have a version
00:43:15.800of a religion that doesn't let you ask questions about it that only wants to take 10 of your
00:43:21.400income every year and build a megachurch. I, you know, that's not the kind of faith that I think
00:43:28.000is coming to save us. I want that knowledge from her to be writ loud. Yes. Yes. You know,
00:43:35.960I don't want to let you go without talking about children centering child liberation. Can you,
00:43:42.120can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. I mean, I think that she, she really felt that a,
00:43:49.240that jesus or other religious figures but especially she's talking about jesus because
00:43:56.120that's when she was a child she was exposed to you know saw the value in little children but i
00:44:03.480think when she was growing up she felt that she had no rights and on top of that as a black child
00:44:09.580as a girl child she really had no rights and she wanted children to feel that they were loved
00:44:18.660that they had value. And she had some adults in her life who were all different in some ways,
00:44:26.780kind of outcast in some ways, who did value her. And he did encourage her in ways that her nuclear
00:44:34.100family in which she was the scapegoat did not. And she tried to be that sort of person for other
00:44:41.980children. She believed that adults, whenever you were around a child, you should try to find
00:44:47.540some way to affirm them, to affirm their talents, beauty, et cetera. And so when she went to my
00:44:54.620school, there was someone I was friends with after she met Bell Hicks. She was like, Bell Hicks said
00:45:01.920that I was beautiful and that I should have my hair natural. And at the time she was chemically1.00
00:45:07.820straightening her hair. And so she listened to Bell Hicks. She stopped straightening her hair
00:45:15.520And she was so excited and she went around telling all of us,
00:45:59.340Maybe the father was a patriarch in the way that her father was.
00:46:03.640She wanted more people around the village to raise the child.
00:46:08.940She was really influenced by Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, which came out when she was a teenager. And that book is about a Black child who's worth it to question because she's dark-skinned and she's poor and her own family does not see the value in her. And so I think uplifting children, seeing their divinity was another way that she was radical.
00:46:37.400such a good way to remember the the radical power that each of us has in the world is to stop
00:46:42.960thinking about it abstractly and just think about how one thing you say to a small kid
00:46:48.200can spin their whole lives in a direction you know and child liberation theology the people
00:46:55.560who believe in that are arguing look Jesus was a child he he experienced childhood and he was
00:47:03.800divine as a child like he was divine as an adult and so we need to look at children as as being
00:47:11.880divine they don't have to reach adulthood to be valuable humans i felt was very anti-corporal
00:47:20.220punishment as well and so when she was talking about children's rights that i don't know how
00:47:27.640much she knew she influenced that movement but some of the pastors and other religious people
00:47:33.540involved in that movement, they directly cite her. She wasn't a mother herself, but she really
00:47:39.760valued children. I think it's important, given so many current political contexts, to also
00:47:46.540highlight that children aren't property either. Parents don't get to determine their identities.
00:47:55.020Yeah, and I think that's also part of her capitalist critique as well. In a capitalist0.90
00:48:00.820society, we learn to look at children as our property. And when you start to unpack capitalism,
00:48:09.000you start to see that children are not something you own. They are not objects. She believed that
00:48:15.400fathers played a huge role and could play a huge role in making those families functional by
00:48:21.660child rearing, by taking care, by being equal parents. She felt taking care of children,
00:48:28.120caregiving teaches men important lessons and so she wanted men to be very involved in raising
00:48:36.500their children just makes sense right yes do you think we could finish with would you read us a bit
00:48:43.840or talk to us a bit about her witch poem oh sure sure so in addition to everything else she was
00:48:53.820also a poet and she has a book called Appalachian Elegy. In this book, she talks about the way that
00:49:01.740she and her friends try to honor the legacy of her mother, her recently departed mother,
00:49:09.320Rosa Bell. Hooks did not publicly identify as a neo-pagan, but her writing suggests that she too
00:49:16.820was influenced by both that movement and possibly by spiritualism. And the introduction to Appalachian
00:49:23.680Elegy, her 2012 book of poems, Hooks discusses partaking in a ritual to commune with her late
00:49:30.400mother's spirit in the Kentucky Hills. In the Buddhist tradition, she started the ritual by
00:49:35.960chanting, but then she and a group of eco-feminist friends, quote, called forth the ancestors,
00:49:42.980spread sage, planted trees, and dug holes for blossoming rose bushes in the name of our mother,1.00
00:49:50.220Rosabelle. Hooks and her eco-feminist friends operate very much like a coven, an argument1.00
00:49:56.940strengthened by a poem in Appalachian Elodie that honors the witch, the woman with the quote
00:50:02.320wilderness within. In the poem, the wild woman is an aging crone, wise hag, who not only holds
00:50:11.360mystery, but can stir the cauldron, tend the flames, and carry messages from the future.
00:50:18.500This crone sounds very much like Hook's maternal grandmother, Saru, a woman more comfortable
00:50:24.740outdoors and indoors, and who prophesied by interpreting dreams.
00:50:29.720But the poem may also be an ode to the witch generally.
00:50:32.440For Hook's view, the Salem witch trials is, quote, an extreme expression of patriarchal
00:50:38.640society's persecution of women, and a message to all women that unless they remain within
00:50:45.120passive subordinate roles, they would be punished, even put to death, end quote.
00:50:52.760I mean, I like that poem so much that it could possibly be about her grandmother,
00:50:58.080the witch generally, and that, yeah, that it was moved to comment on the Salem witch trials and
00:51:04.100what they signified about women. And even today, what happens when women, you know,1.00
00:51:09.460get out of line quote unquote such a powerful way for us all to remember1.00
00:51:16.140that one that that message has been there for so long so loud that if we step out of line we'll be
00:51:23.580punished but also that like those those wild ants those those women who were more comfortable
00:51:31.580outside you know those women who talked to their distant mothers that they've been there too
00:51:39.440for a long time and that even these like icons of a feminism that can seem very militant and
00:51:49.620anti-spiritual sometimes that they had at their heart a knowledge of those grandmothers and a
00:51:55.640respect for a non-violent christianity and a liberatory radical buddhism you know that those
00:52:03.320those strains were there and that they want us to have them too as we continue that work so
00:52:08.140thank you so much for your work and your incredible research oh thank you yeah i i i0.78
00:52:16.180love reading your your books because it's like nadra read all the fucking things that was not0.59
00:52:22.800googling you know nadra read all the books yes i i appreciate it and i hope you feel better by the0.94
00:52:35.800way oh yeah thanks i'm fine my my kids you know at that age where she gets everything so we get
00:52:41.460everything so we're fine we're fine it's all fine just carry on right yes yes yeah yeah thanks so
00:52:50.700much for your time today i know writing about the the spiritual visions of people takes an
00:52:58.420enormous amount of reading and work and doesn't make us rich so i hope that you know that that
00:53:05.560work is incredibly transformative that rescuing and tracing together and weaving together those
00:53:11.180insights and making sure that that part of that thinker's story is told it's like she said like
00:53:18.680someone told her that she had the god voice you're like carrying through that god voice in her and
00:53:24.640that i think is is transformative work so i hope that you know we appreciate you and thanks for0.85
00:53:30.080coming on the podcast again and bless it fucking me and thank you so much for having me0.99