“To Be Loved”: A bell hooksian exploration of Black women undergraduates’ experiences of love, community, and healing at a PWI

Abstract: Scholarship on Black women’s relationships, experiences, and intersectional identities have been studied diversely, yet there is scant research on how participating in campus counterspaces and affinity programming might influence their relationships with themselves, other students, and overall collegiate success. Drawing from a larger ethnographic study, this article utilized a bell hooksian theoretical approach to analyze the relationships and experiences of Black women students who participated in a love-centered Black women-led student affairs program at a predominantly white institution. Findings show that students had improved collegiate experiences because the program served as an affirming affinity-counterspace that fostered deep interpersonal relationships of love and community that engendered notions of healing.