Whitney Alese Draws 5,000 to bell hooks Book Club as JD Vance Title Row Revives 'Communion'
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Jul 1
Whitney Alese Draws 5,000 to bell hooks Book Club as JD Vance Title Row Revives 'Communion'
1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Jul 1
Summary
More than 5,000 people have joined Whitney Alese’s free online book club on bell hooks’s “Communion,” after her Instagram push turned backlash over JD Vance’s memoir title into a reading campaign.
Alese, a Philadelphia content creator with nearly 150,000 followers, began posting in early April; several videos urging people to read hooks drew more than 800,000 views.
The controversy centered on Vance naming his new memoir “Communion,” matching hooks’s 2002 book, after his 2016 “Hillbilly Elegy” had already drawn comparisons to hooks’s “Appalachian Elegy.”
Alese said she wanted to redirect attention from opposing Vance’s work toward elevating hooks, whose book argues that women should cultivate self-love rather than seek love outside themselves.