57 pages • 1-hour read
Belonging: A Culture of Place
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism.
The Intersection of Race, Place, and Exclusion in the Rural US
In Belonging, hooks returns again and again to the ways race and geography shape one another, particularly in rural Kentucky. She interrogates how land, housing, and community are structured by the legacy of segregation, not only through overtly racist policies but also through the quiet persistence of exclusionary practices. For hooks, the “culture of place” is never neutral—it is shaped by who is allowed to belong, who is kept out, and what histories are remembered or erased. This theme becomes the lens through which she reflects on her own upbringing, her eventual return to Kentucky, and the systemic barriers that continue to separate Black and white rural lives.
Hooks uses personal narrative to show how rural communities can simultaneously nurture a sense of rootedness and enforce racial boundaries. In “Again—Segregation Must End,” she observes that while legal segregation has been dismantled, “neutral” mechanisms like zoning laws, real estate pricing, and white neighborhood preferences maintain racial separation. She notes the ideology that equates whiteness with safety and Blackness with disorder, a framing that continues to deny Black families access to land and housing in desirable areas. Even in places with progressive reputations, such as Berea, Kentucky, she sees traces of this exclusion, describing white residents who verbally support integration but quietly resist it when it comes to their own neighborhoods.
This tension between inclusion and exclusion is cultural as well as geographic. Hooks recalls how Black people were taught to see poor whites as “an example of what not to be and become” (54), revealing how hierarchies within rural communities could be used to divide groups with shared economic struggles. At the same time, she resists nostalgia for an idealized rural past, noting how the Great Migration disrupted Black agrarian traditions and severed many from a relationship to the land that had been both sustaining and oppressive. The trauma of displacement, she argues, is compounded when Black cultural ties to rural life are erased or ignored in dominant narratives.
Her reflections also connect racial exclusion to environmental domination. In her conversations with Wendell Berry, she identifies a link between white supremacy and ecological destruction, insisting that both must be confronted together. The control of land—whether through legal segregation, economic exploitation, or environmental exploitation—has historically served to reinforce racial hierarchies. “Like Wendell Berry,” she writes, “I believe that we can restore our hope […] by building communities where self-esteem comes not from feeling superior to any group but from one’s relationship to the land, to the people, to the place” (183).
By weaving together autobiography, cultural criticism, and environmental thought, hooks demonstrates how rural exclusion operates not only through overt racism but also through the values and power structures embedded in place itself. In her vision, dismantling these structures requires more than legislative change—it calls for a fundamental reimagining of belonging that honors the histories of Black rural life and creates space for communities in which race no longer determines access to home, land, and safety.
Reclaiming Identity Through Return and Rootedness
Hooks frames her return to Kentucky as an act of reclamation—a way to recover a self-shaped by the landscapes, values, and histories of her childhood. For hooks, return is not an uncritical embrace of the past; it is a deliberate process of sorting through memory, discarding what harms, and preserving what sustains. Rootedness, in her telling, is an intentional act that connects identity to place in ways that resist the dislocation and alienation produced by modern, capitalist culture.
Hooks describes her departure from Kentucky as both a physical and psychic separation. She left seeking what she thought would be “more enlightened environments” (58), only to find that racism, classism, and disconnection from nature were just as present elsewhere. Nevertheless, distance allowed her to “lay bare the past” (60), keeping what was “soul nourishing” while letting go of unnecessary suffering. This selective reclamation is central to her vision of rootedness, as it acknowledges that the Kentucky of her youth was scarred by racism and patriarchy, but it also holds space for the land, traditions, and relationships that formed her deepest sense of self.
Her move to Berea serves as a focal point for this theme. Berea, with its interracial founding and ongoing commitment to social justice through education, becomes a symbolic and literal ground for reimagining belonging. In settling there, hooks not only reconnects with her Appalachian roots but also situates herself in a community whose values align with her vision for a just, inclusive culture of place. She encourages other Black families to join her in reclaiming space in such towns, actively resisting the forces that have historically pushed them out.
Rootedness for hooks is inseparable from the practices and traditions passed down by her elders. The quilt-making of her grandmother Baba, the self-sufficiency of her grandparents’ agrarian lifestyle, and the vernacular speech of her youth all serve as touchstones for an identity grounded in heritage. She recognizes that modern Black life—particularly in urban contexts—has often been distanced from these rural, place-based traditions, a loss accelerated by the Great Migration and by consumer capitalism’s push toward assimilation. Returning home allows her to reassert these cultural inheritances as living, evolving elements of her identity.
At the same time, hooks resists the temptation to romanticize return. She acknowledges the persistence of racism and exclusion even in her chosen home. Rootedness, then, is not about retreating into a safe enclave but about committing to a place with full awareness of its complexities and contradictions. It is a groundedness that deepens political engagement, ecological stewardship, and cultural preservation.
In centering return and rootedness as acts of reclamation, hooks challenges dominant narratives that equate progress with upward mobility and geographic displacement. Instead, she offers a model in which staying—or coming back—can be a radical choice, one that honors heritage, nurtures one’s identity, and builds the kind of communities where belonging is sustained across generations.
Critiques of Whiteness and Nostalgia in Environmental and Social Discourse
Throughout Belonging: A Culture of Place, hooks critiques the ways both environmental and social discourses in the United States are shaped by whiteness and nostalgia. She exposes how dominant narratives frequently center white experiences while erasing or marginalizing Black voices, and how nostalgia can romanticize a “simpler” past without confronting the racial, economic, and gendered injustices embedded in that history. Her work challenges readers to reimagine these discourses so they reflect historical truth and center inclusivity rather than exclusion.
In environmental contexts, hooks shows how land, rural life, and agrarian traditions are often portrayed as belonging to white Americans. Whether in depictions of sustainable farming, environmental activism, or heritage crafts like quilt-making, Black presence is minimized or omitted altogether. This erasure perpetuates myths that Black Americans have been disconnected from nature, despite centuries of stewardship, labor, and artistry tied to the land. By naming her grandmother Sarah Hooks Oldham and great-grandmother Bell Blair Hooks, hooks actively resists this erasure, reclaiming Black women’s artistry and environmental legacy.
Her critique extends to social discourse, where nostalgia for “community” or “simpler times” often masks the realities of segregation, systemic violence, and exclusion. For instance, hooks points out that mainstream culture tends to celebrate the beauty of southern Black folk traditions—such as porch gatherings or church rituals—only to declare them relics of a bygone era. This framing turns living cultural practices into consumable artifacts, ignoring the systems of domination that shaped them. For hooks, nostalgia without truth-telling is not only incomplete but complicit in maintaining inequality.
Her exchanges with Wendell Berry illuminate the need for both environmental and social discourse to confront white supremacy directly. Hooks values Berry’s recognition that the domination of land and the domination of people are interconnected, but she pushes further, asking how racial hierarchies shape not just environmental thought but social relationships. She critiques the internalized racism that can lead Black people to undervalue their agrarian heritage or to conform to the “ecological madness” of mainstream consumerism, thereby reinforcing systems of domination.
Hooks also identifies capitalist exploitation as a force distorting both environmental and social relations. The example of the tobacco plant—cherished in her childhood yet commodified under “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (8)—demonstrates how something culturally and spiritually significant can be transformed into a product marketed for profit, with devastating effects on communities. Her ability to hold both reverence for the plant and condemnation for its exploitation mirrors her broader call for nuance in confronting history.
By integrating race, history, and lived experience into her analysis, hooks offers a vision of discourse—environmental and social alike—that refuses to separate beauty from brutality or culture from politics. She envisions conversations that acknowledge Black people’s deep connections to the land, reckon honestly with the legacies of oppression, and dismantle both the exclusionary whiteness and shallow nostalgia that pervade dominant narratives. In doing so, she frames environmental and social belonging as inseparable from racial justice, urging a more honest, inclusive, and transformative dialogue.
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