Belonging

A Culture of Place

By: Bell Hooks

Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo

What does it mean to call a place home? Who is allowed to become a member of a community? When can we say that we truly belong?

These are some of the questions of place and belonging that renowned cultural critic Bell Hooks examines in Belonging: A Culture of Place. Traversing past and present, Belonging charts a cyclical journey in which Hooks moves from place to place, only to end where she began—her old Kentucky home.

Hooks has written provocatively about race, gender, and class; and in this book she turns her attention to focus on issues of land and land ownership. Reflecting on the fact that 90% of all black people lived in the agrarian South before mass migration to northern cities in the early 1900s, she writes about black farmers, about black folks who have been committed both in the past and in the present to local food production, to being organic, and to finding solace in nature. It would be impossible to contemplate these issues without thinking about the politics of race and class. Reflecting on the racism that continues to find expression in the world of real estate, she writes about segregation in housing and economic racialized zoning. In these critical essays, hooks finds surprising connections that link of the environment and sustainability to the politics of race and class that reach far beyond Kentucky.

©2009 Taylor & Francis (P)2023 Tantor

A powerful examination of how our relationship with the world and people in it define home

Loved this exploration and peeling back of what makes a place home and all the things that are required for community.

I needed this!

Ms. Hooks had long been my favorite author. I had been sitting on this text for so long.

Story and Narrator

This is an interesting book. I enjoyed listening to it, and the narrator has such an soft and soothing voice. It was easy to listen to.

lovely

this was exactly what I needed. she talks about being a black woman from the south, race relations, gender relations, and more

“The circularity of the sacred.”

A beautifully powerful journey and exposition of belonging and place. It is deeply touching to return home with hooks in this text and witness that in “the circularity of the sacred,” love gets the final word.