A social media campaign has helped propel a book by the late Kentucky feminist author bell hooks onto the New York Times bestseller list for the first time since its first publication more than two decades ago.
After Vice President J.D. Vance announced the title for his newest book – “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” which was released this summer – some pointed out its resemblance to a work by the late Kentucky feminist writer bell hooks called “Communion: The Female Search for Love.” Some also remarked that the title of Vance’s 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” is similar in name to another of hooks’ works, “Appalachian Elegy.”
In response, some on social media called for people to support hooks’ work instead of Vance’s. Following the grassroots campaign, hooks’ “Communion” – which examines the role of love in life and society through a feminist lens – landed at No. 12 on The New York Times’ paperback nonfiction bestseller list in June, its first ever appearance on the outlet’s monthly ranking. This month, it has climbed up to No. 5 on that same list. It also hit No. 1 on the Indie Bestsellers Trade Paperback Nonfiction List for the weeks ending June 21 and June 28, and has remained at No. 2 on that list tracking sales at independent bookstores nationwide for the first half of July.
WKMS’s Hannah Saad spoke with Dr. E. Gale Greenlee and shauna caldwell – co-editors on the upcoming book “belonging to place: The Creative Community and Artistic Legacy of bell hooks” – about the campaign driving sales of hooks’ “Communion” and what lessons can be taken from the Hopkinsville-born-and-raised scholar’s 2002 work.
Hannah Saad: When Vice President J.D. Vance announced the title of his newest book, “Communion” this spring, several people were quick to point out bell hooks has a work of the same name. What was your reaction when you saw this announcement, and what has the reception to bell hooks’ “Communion” been like since that announcement?
shauna caldwell: My first thought was, “of course.” It is not new. We saw a similar replication and similarity with [Vance’s] first book “Hillbilly Elegy,” which rose to be one of the best-selling books from the region. As an Appalachian studies scholar, I was immersed in that moment several years ago – connecting with “Appalachian Elegy,” bell's book of poetry [that is] really grounded in place about this region.
I was not surprised. I felt strongly that we needed to do something around it, and I was glad to see that other people were also recognizing it… Even the book cover is something that I noticed. The font is the same for both “Appalachian Elegy” and “Hillbilly Elegy,” as well as “Communion” – both of them.
…It's not the first time that Black women have been systematically silenced. As disappointing as it is, it was something that I recognized.
Dr. E. Gale Greenlee: When I found out about it, I thought, “wait a minute, not again.” Like shauna said, we saw this with “Hillbilly Elegy” biting off of the title “Appalachian Elegy,” and then here again we have “Communion.” One time is already a little suspect. Twice is definitely suspect and definitely gets a side eye – especially, as shauna pointed out, when the intellectual labor of Black women is oftentimes going unrecognized.
HS: There's been a little bit of support [for hooks’ “Communion,”] since then. Actually, that push has led bell hooks “Communion” onto the New York Times Bestseller List, and it's flying off shelves at many independent bookstores. What does it mean to see bell’s work regaining popularity and skyrocketing in sales more than 20 years after its initial release?
EGG: That is just mind-boggling to me. You know, no pun intended – or maybe pun intended – but [it] shows just the power of community because so many people have rallied around this book. There was a social media content creator Whitney Alese, who we both have known about, who wanted people to just really focus on bell's work and not so much Vance and get people reading.
And then [there were] others who were posting. We were able to join in this effort and tag bookstores and friends and contributors to our project as well to get the word out. So to see it on the New York Times bestseller list – for the first time ever – is really astonishing.
HS: “Communion” is part of bell hooks’ “All About Love” trilogy and her greater writings about love. Specifically, what can you tell our listeners about how “Communion” fits into her thinkings about love and its role in life and society?
EGG: There is a beautiful essay – so many beautiful essays – in “All About Love,” which is probably one of the works that most people know her for if they're not familiar with her feminist theory or her work of social critique or art criticism or pop culture criticism. But there's a beautiful essay that she has about justice [and] childhood lessons. She says “there can be no love without justice,” and “without justice, there is no love.” In that context, she's really talking about the power dynamic that necessarily or inadvertently exists between parents and children, but she stretches that to all of us.
So not only are we thinking about domination in our own interpersonal relationships, we can think about: How is power showing up in our relationships in our workplaces, with family members, in our community, and also in our society at large? And I think that's the beautiful thing about “Communion” is that yes, she's focusing on women and how we have been socialized – and men as well – to view femininity in certain ways and even to devalue femaleness. But if we're looking at self actualization, if we're looking at being our fullest and freest self, we have to seek that inward as opposed to external validation or trying to meet some sort of social script that patriarchy has demanded of us. So it definitely fits into her larger critique about sexism and patriarchy being damaging and harmful to us all.
HS: Can you kind of speak to the impact that bell hooks has had, especially being a Black woman when – at the time that she would have been writing [her early works] – a lot of the more popular feminist works were coming from white women. What does she do to help bring Appalachian writers, Black writers and Black women up through her works?
EGG: bell definitely is not the only Black feminist writer who has created space for a conversation about feminist thought and feminist criticism and critiques about sexism and domination in Black spaces. There are many Black feminists, foremothers that we can point to. But at the time when her first book came out, which was called “Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism,” she really was calling out mainstream white feminists and the mainstream white feminist movement about not including the voices and the experiences of Black women, much less other women of color. So she's definitely created a lane to acknowledge the specific experiences of what it's like to live here in the U.S. and being Black, being a woman of color, being, in her case, a woman from a working class community in Appalachia as well. So [she] was definitely thinking about intersectionality before a lot of people were really utilizing the word, and she wasn't necessarily even talking about that then as well. But she certainly opened up space for that recognition.
HS: You’re both co-editors on the upcoming book “Belonging to Place: The Creative Community and Artistic Legacy of bell hooks.” Can you talk about what that work will include, what it’s about, and how you’re working with Appalachian artists to help carry on this legacy?
sc: In 2022, just after bell had passed, I took myself to her archives [at the bell hooks center at Berea College] just to read her journals and spend time [there] and to do some research on the artwork that I knew was in her collection through reading “Art on My Mind” and other interviews and essays that she had written for catalogs for artists that I am inspired by. When I got there, I realized they didn't have a list of the artwork that was in her collection. So from that point, I was able to connect with Gale, and we were able to connect with Dr. Linda Strong-Leek, who was the executor of her estate at the time, and to catalog that collection of artwork.
So now we have that list. We have photographs. We have bios of the artists who are included in that collection, like Carrie Mae Weems and Lorna Simpson and Emma Amos, among many others who are just truly incredible contributors to arts and culture. That catalog will be published in our book, as well as a transcript that is from a public library in Kentucky where bell gave an artist talk about her own artwork, which is also included in her collection at the institute. That will be in the book as well, where she talks about her own process [and] her artistic experience in visual arts as it connects to her writing, as well as her hopes and visions for the institute and why she grounded that in Kentucky.
Gale and I kind of mimic bell's curatorial practice in the institute, where she's created this community of artists whose work is on the walls who she was deeply engaged in conversation with in art criticism and theory. We've invited artists who inspire our own way of seeing belonging in Appalachia and with artists who are intimately connected to bell through residencies or that knew her personally or who were just deeply inspired by her praxis. Those artists will each have a chapter in the book, as well as a conversation between Gale and I that will talk about how we came to the project and some documentation of workshops that we held as the project was brewing, and … images from the archives as well.
EGG: It's a really exciting project. It's also a heart project for us both. shauna and I met when I was a teacher-scholar and resident at the bell hooks center at Berea College, and I had actually not been inside the bell hooks institute. It had been shuttered for some time. I knew that she had this really phenomenal art collection, and [I] had spoken to others who had been inside and who knew about the work and the artists that were included on those walls, and who also knew about her own art pieces being located in that space.
… I'm really excited about this collection because, as shauna said, we've invited 16 artists, some who are intimately connected to Appalachia because they're from the region or have spent time working significant years in the region. A few are connected to bell through the bell hooks center. We have Rosy Petri as well as Channel Stone, who were the first two artists in residence for the bell hooks center during COVID and immediately after school returned after COVID who are participating as well.
These artists are engaging with our archives and then creating pieces. Some created pieces specifically for our book and for the associated art exhibition, which opened this past May, and is on exhibit until October 3. It's been a labor of love… to show another dimension of a feminist thinker that we think we know so well.
“belonging to place: The Creative Community and Artistic Legacy of bell hooks” is set to publish next year.
