bell hooks on poetry and survival

This morning I opened my copy of bell hooks’ book Wounds of Passion to find the following passage. It relates to the discussion I’ve been having and reminds me that in spite of all my complaining about growing up without finding voices like mine in literature, I found solace in what I did read. It was the telling of these stories that inspired me to write my own.

Poetry sustains life. Of this I am certain. There is no doubt in my mind that the pain of poverty whether material or emotional lack can be eased by the power of language. For in that misunderstood childhood of mine, I found that sanctuary in poetry. It restored me, allowed me to come back from the space of woundedness and sadness to a recognition of beauty. Growing up in a working-class black southern home, in racial segregation, I moved beyond the boundaries of race and class through books. The writers of my earliest reading days were not African American for I had been given a collection of more than a hundred little leather-bound books with tiny print that you could hold in the palms of your hands. And these books were classic or so the elderly neighbor told me who had called me to come to her house and get them.    -bell hooks

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